JBL 1 Series 104 Compact Desktop Speakers, Powered Reference Monitors - Bluetooth enabled (sold as pair)

Product Information

These speakers are also a big step up verses the typical junk that comes with a desktop computer or are built into a computer monitor. I can see a wide range of uses for the Series 104 monitors, and as they are so affordable, they should be very appealing to the educational market. I’m currently using the jack inputs for video editing and Bluetooth for music playback via Spotify from phone / laptop. Much like automobile speakers, a coaxial design assists in phase coherency, on-axis frequency response and, of course, saving space.

You can even reference your personal mixes over Bluetooth – ensuring they’re sounding great, no matter the device you’re listening on. Our only issue in terms of outright presentation is the slight coarseness to the treble and upper midrange.

The world’s top recording studios and touring artists rely on JBL Professional monitors to deliver unparalleled fidelity and performance.

If you’ve heard the previous models, then you know exactly what to expect – nothing’s changed in sound quality terms.JBL 104 compact, full-range, powered reference monitors draw from seven decades of JBL Professional engineering to deliver the truest, most accurate sonic presentation of any monitor in their class. Studio monitors, on the other hand, are designed to produce an accurate flat response across the aural spectrum without artificially ‘sweetening’ the sound.

One of the things that providing active equalisation gets you is that the designer can trade off design compromises differently.

Thinking there is just a passive crossover, I would just power the slave unit with my own amplifier. To earn that kind of accolade, they’d need a ruler-flat frequency response, and that’s something they simply don’t provide. JBL refers to the 104-BT as reference monitors, but that could be a little misleading on a couple of points: you aren’t going to achieve the clarity and detail you’d probably like for recording and mixing music, but equally, these are not the entirely staid and sober speakers that description would suggest. But we’ve never taken a look at their “prosumer” speakers until NAMM 2019 – where they introduced the 1 Series 104 Compact Powered Monitors to us. Sound quality: yes, they're lacking in low-low bass department due to size, but overall bass is still solid.