Any1 know what is JBL Control SB-5?

[andrewln]

I thought it was a subwoofer...so I bought it..

I test it with some pop music

Result:
almost no sound comming out of the unit..a little bit...
i unpluged the speakers, u can still hear high parts in the sub with the low parts...everything seems very dim..(have to crank it up to hear sound comming out of this thing. but with no sound...but the whole living room shakes

is this normal?...or is this unit that i bought broken

doesn't seem to be 350watt as the web says...seems to have little power comared to those 130watts
if this is not a sub...wut is it? what is it for?

thank you
Andrew Lin

*I bought these for $50Canadian (second handed)

HTML

 

[Gentle]

Does this have any bearing on your issue?

Technical Notes, Volume 1 Number 12B
Polarity Conventions of JBL Transducers and Systems
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/technote/tn_v1n12b.pdf

I'll be honest, I'm not an audiophile, so all this is "greek" to me.

But there may be a compatibility issue with that product that may or may not be easy to overcome.

Read up, and see if I have helped you in any way.

Good luck.

Gentle

 

[andrewln]

wow...can't understand anything in there.. =

thanx for your kind help...i guess i should return this to him if i can find a solution

Andrew Lin

 

[maddmax]

It appears that your sub is for a distributed voltage line system. This means that it is suited for applications like Madison Square Garden. The driver and amp are probably very high quality but it will be difficult to integrate well in a home-theatre or PC multimedia environment.

 

[Gentle]

I think we found an audiophile.

Heh.

Gentle

 

[andrewln]

hehe...so do you recomend me keeping it? or return it or sell it? I plug it into my computer...seems it is giving the unit more power, a little more sound but still alot less than the speakers

thank you

 

[maddmax]

It might make an awesome sub in a home theatre 5.1 setup in the right hands. The woofer itself is probably a high sensitivity driver with a more or less standard impedance of 4 or 8 ohms. The line transfomer/amp would likely have to be replaced or modified in some way. The integrity of the driver would need to be verified before spending any effort or $.

$50 is better than a big paperweight, but some auction site people will buy anything.

 

[andrewln]

ahh..yap, thank you...the woofer is 4 ohms (checked the back)

Andrew Lin

 

[Alex018]

This is a passive subwoofer, which means it needs an amplifier hooked up to it to get any sound out of it. It produces only low frequency sounds (i.e. subwoofer, only bass sounds). It contains four 6" drivers inside of it. That's what it is designed for, to add only bass to your audio system.

It works best at very high wattage. Although it is designed for home use, it can handle quite a bit of power, and needs a clean, high-powered amp to make it work to its full potential. As you know, these things are built like tanks, and with a sound to match.

You then hook up your existing speakers to the speaker outputs (labeled as "satellites") on the rear. It can handle two sets of satellites.

What it was designed for was to use a smaller set (or two) of bookshelf speakers and along with this JBL subwoofer and you could have a very full sounding audio sytem without having to have large towering speakers sitting out in the open of your living room. Smaller speakers cannot reproduce deep pounding bass due to the lack of size to the bass drivers.

The reason why I know all of this is because I bought a SB-5 brand new in about 1990 and still use it to this day. It's been pounding my living room for quite some time now.

Andy

 

[dfinder]

oh my my... lots of hi fi music going on around here... catch later.