{"id":885,"date":"2013-12-20T21:41:53","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T21:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/?p=885"},"modified":"2023-11-06T12:46:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T18:46:41","slug":"jbl-lsr305-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/?p=885","title":{"rendered":"JBL LSR305 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every musician is in the need for some great studio speakers. If you can’t hear your music with clarity, you’ll make all kinds of mistakes while mixing. A bad pair of speakers is like creating art with blurry vision.<\/p>\n

I’ve always wanted a nice pair of monitors, but a lot of other gear purchases have come before these on my personal “Gear Quest.” Since the speakers in my living room are all messed up and getting worse (digital noise & a weird vibrating low energy noise), I used that as an excuse to move the stereo I use for mixing to my living room to make way for some sparkling new audio monitors!<\/p>\n

My current setup<\/strong><\/p>\n\"studio--12.5.2013\"<\/a>\n

Here’s my current mixing\/tracking setup. I use an emu 1616m box that runs through a Sony stereo. I bought the stereo to use for mixing when I moved into the first Beware of Dog<\/a> location in 2006. Those speakers each rest on a CD spindle package that has about 20 burned CDs in each. Maybe someday I’ll get some fancy foam or speaker stands to rest them on.<\/p>\n\"Sony-Stereo\"<\/a>\n

My current system is quite “boxy” that has a real muddled mid\/low end and it also doesn’t really reproduce the high frequencies well. Early on my mixes had a harsh top end and a too bright bottom end to compensate for the weaknesses in these speakers. As my ears and listening skills have developed, I learned the limitations of this equipment and to compensate. <\/p>\n

So Many Options…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was looking to spend around 300 dollars for a pair, as that seems to be a price point for a lot of manufacturers that will put you above the entry level but below the real pricey stuff. I have no idea the difference in quality between $300 and $800 monitors. Musical equipment I find the hardest to purchase because you don’t really know a piece of gear until you spend some time with it, and I won’t have the ability to do a shootout with all the monitors I’ve heard about. This purchase is going to directly effect my music and I plan to have these speakers for a long time.<\/p>\n

With little to go by, I asked around and dig some digging on some internet forums. I narrowed down these choices for my price range and user reviews:<\/p>\n

KRK Rokit 5 300\/pair
\nJBL LSR305 300\/pair
\nM-Audio BX5 D2 300\/pair
\nMackie MR5mk3 300\/pair
\nM-Audio AV 40 150\/pair<\/p>\n

A lot of people either hated or loved the Rokits, and it seemed like a common complaint was they started to hurt after hours of listening. It seemed like the most consistently positive reviews pointed to the JBL LSR305s<\/a>. After keeping on the lookout for some deals, musiciansfriend had them marked off for Christmas -$30 and with an extra 10% off. I was able to get each for around $109 brand new! <\/p>\n\"JBL-in-box\"<\/a>\n

The New Setup<\/strong>
\nThese speakers are a lot more bass heavy than my previous ones, but the bass is crystal clear. Before I hooked them up I played “Born On the Bayou” by CCR on my old speakers and directly compared them on the new setup. The JBLs have a nice clear open sound, and they definitely have a great “sweet spot” as they pointed out in the manual:<\/p>\n\"sweet_spot\"<\/a>\n

Looking forward to this long overdue upgrade and to long hours spent with these guys. <\/p>\n

3 Week Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

Definitely loving these new speakers! They are so “clear” and “open” and they don’t have the “mud” factor my last speakers had. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every musician is in the need for some great studio speakers. If you can’t hear your music with clarity, you’ll make all kinds of mistakes while mixing. A bad pair of speakers is like creating art with blurry vision. I’ve always wanted a nice pair of monitors, but a lot of other gear purchases have…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gear"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2082,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travisleewiggins.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}