I get to visit studios that record rock and roll in both LA and Nashville. Most of the comments in this thread about "sound quality or character" - as though this drove the speaker decision making for studios - is not the way it was or is. Studios need reliability above ALL else. They are renting rooms to people every day by the hour and a failure means no rent, no income and no clients. It could take days to get replacement parts and that means a very big loss indeed.
JBL became what it was largely though the amazing voice coil tech they implemented before anyone else: dense, square wire voice coils that could handle enormous power and get rid of heat (that causes the driver to fail). No one else had this tech back in the 60s, 70s except JBL so they won a lot of work. Today JBL is long out of the studio business, its way to small and niche for them. Way more live sound business, commercial sound reinforcement and home audio.
The top studio speakers you see used in studios in LA and Nashville are ATC, Focal, Neumann and an assortment of other very small company brands. Reliability is a top value but so is low distortion- so you can hear errors and details that otherwise are covered up with higher distortion speakers. Places like Blackbird, East West, Abbey Road, Electric Lady all have both large and small ATC in most if not all their rooms. Many mastering houses are ATC based like Sterling Mastering. ATC has tech that makes their voice coils super reliable, so they get a lot of the work now.
So if you want to use what is used to record rock and roll, ATC, Focal, Neumann.
Brad
