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JBL 4367 shoutiness remedies?

Hello all, I am a first time post-er, so pardon me if I am clumsy with this venue. 
I live in a small town on an island in SE Alaska, and do not have immediate access to anywhere locally that sells hifi equipment besides Walmart. So after reading complimentary reviews, I ordered from USA Tube Audio a pair of JBL 4367 speakers, ..a two way design  with a woofer and a horn. I have about 20 hours on the speakers, driving them with a Primare I35 Integrated Amplifier and a perceived higher end Primare CD player., and for an alternate music source, I use Music Choice from my cable box. I also have a 10 band graphic EQ to tailor the  sound to my liking. The issue I bought when I paid for the speakers is a  loudly blaring shoutiness in the range of frequencies of the human voice. It can be loud and overpowering even with EQ attenuating the frequencies between 500 and 4khz. I called the dealer who I bought them from for advice..he told me the amp and cd player are junk, ($6000 junk) and the only way to fix the shoutiness was to buy tube equipment.  On some recordings, the speakers sound wonderful, but on some, it makes me question whether or not they're worth keeping. The room in the apt I have them in is about 15x18 with low ceilings. Does anyone have any practical suggestions or ideas on how to remedy or at least partially correct this issue? Thank you for reading.
deckhand
tlehma's avatar
tlehma
20 posts
 
Wow! Deckhand you have two of the finest studio monitors made by JBL. The “shoutiness” you mention is a desirable quality in many studio monitors and translateS to being a bit “forward”.

Yes, work toward tuning your room and then Live with the speakers for a while before doing anything hasty.... you may find you love them as you adjust to their sound!

t
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,541 posts
 
You might be getting bounce from the floor.....if you don't have carpets try some rugs in front of the speakers at various distances  (you should use natural fiber..thin nylon probably wont do the trick)
asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
5,187 posts
 
Horns have an 'in your face' quality with some recordings.  Most come off as being a tad 'bright' (to use an overused comment), but there are those that will never respond to room treatment...or even eq, which just renders it 'meh' and still in yer face....Tube amps have a tendency to 'soften' horns; imho, it seems to spring from the two technologies 'growing up' together....
Live with 'em for awhile, break them and you in together.  Do the simple stuff (placement, carpet, wall/ceiling treats, etc.) 1st.
The 4367s' can be bi-amped....score a used/decent tube amp for the horns.  They're naturally efficient, so the amp doesn't have to be able to crack concrete, just to tame the savage horn....;)

Beats sending them back if they'll let you, if you like them for the most part....

soma70
153 posts
 
+1 cleaner power / either conditioner or generator.

clean the connections of your speaker cable and interconnects.

upgrade the power cords and plug straight into the wall.

try morrow speaker cable SP5 or similar.
ssg308's avatar
ssg308
113 posts
 
Don’t blame the speakers. They produce what ever your gear is capable of. It took me 11 amps to  test before I was happy with the sound. At the end pair of the Thresholds S500 what did the trick and than I realize that preamp does make big difference how the whole system sounds. I listen to big range of the music from classical reggae to slam death metal and punk rock, said that I noticed that recordings are the biggest problem. Some albums just sounds bad, really bad. So in my experience when you know your system sounds great on one recording and bad on the others, blame recording and look for remastered recording or just get use to the fact that it just sounds bad. So if I were you the first thing I would do is to get the eq out of the system and start listening the real recording. EQ what it does just throw in to the sound distortions and noises. My 2 cents  
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