Which speakers are better? bose, jamo, m&k or JBL?

Question

Hi,

Someone i know said that the speakers he has are better then all the speakers from the brands Jamo, BOSE, M & K, Bower Wilkins. His speakers are JBL branded.

Is this correct or are these brands better then JBL?

Thankyou

Answer 1

i like BOSE

Answer 2

Klipsch is also a good brand.  Still, its not always about the brand.  A crappy set of JBL's will never be better than a nice set of speakers from any other company.

Tell your "friend" to stop being a fanboy of one company.

Answer 3

Jamo makes excellent speakers.

B&W is really good.

I've never heard M&K speakers so far ... so I can't say anything about them.

JBL makes mediocre ... well, maybe even acceptable stuff in the ultra-low-cost segment, but even for that price cathegory there are better ones ... much better ones.

Bose sucks big time. Well, okay. That's no sufficient information for you but it sums it up pretty well. Before you even consider looking at / listening to Bose please take your time reading this: http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

If that's too much text for you (it really is quite much ;) ) at least read everything from the "FAIR LISTENING:" part on. You will understand why Bose speakers have the reputation they have and why they don't deserve it.

EDIT: Other good brands you might consider are

- Klipsch

- Nubert

- Teufel

- Focal

- Heco

- Infinity

- KEF

In my oppinion all of them are very good in their respective price segments and for their targeted buyer-groups. In absolute comparison the more expensive ones are better than the "cheaper" ones and so depending on your budget and your desires some of them may be uninteresting for you because they are far below or beyond what you can / want to afford.

(I'd also like to note some of them may be difficult to come by for you and thus be uninteresting as well. Teufel is a German manufacturer for example and so is Nubert. At least Teufel only sell their speakers themselves.)

Answer 4

I agree with kai, all the way, please click that link he provided, Bose is by far one of the worst speakers you can buy for home theater.  It is known for great advertising and snobbish people who can brag they own Bose, but of anyone of them read that link, they would see not only how much sound they were missing, but how much they overpaid on those cheap cubes and lackluster "bass module"

Avoid Bose at all costs.  Think of it this way.  Physics dictates that a speakers driver can only reproduce so much sound.  Those tiny 2" drivers can only reach up to 13kHz (the human ear can hear between 20Hz and 20kHz) So think of it as 100 points on the listening scale so right there you are missing out on 7 points right there.  Now the tiny speakers can only go down to about 95Hz (on a good day), but to have a proper setup the crossover on the sub needs to be at 80hz, so you are now missing out on 15 points right there (80-95Hz).

So now you have the bass module which can't be called a subwoofer because regulations state a subwoofer must reach 35hz or lower before being called a sub, but since the "bass module" only has three 5.25" drivers and again physics dictates it can't get below that, the bass module can only get down to 47Hz.  So now you are missing from 20Hz to 47 Hz or 27 points on the scale.  

So an a scale from 20Hz to 20kHz you are missing 27 points of low bass, 15 points of mid range and 7 points of upper frequency sound or 49 points on a 100 point scale.  That is 50% of all sound missing that those crappy cubes and bass module cannot produce.  But wait it gets better, this is with a +/-10.5db volume adjustment  (standard is +/-3db) Nobody and I mean no other company lists this high an audio adjustment to make the frequency response that Bose has.  Complete garbage.

Jamo makes great small speakers, M&K is highly regarded, and Bowers&Wilkins is very high end but fantastic speakers.  JBL depending on the model makes great HT speakers.  they can get very loud with very little power.

Again please read that link that Kai provided, it is a wealth of info.

Answer 5

BOSE all the way, waaaaaay better than jbl, or anything else for that matter. price is high, but you pay for what you get.

Answer 6

BOSE IS WAY TO OVER PRICED seriously. but JBL jamo and the other you've mentioned are within range with each other. these speakers are not even close in terms of design adn sound quality as brands like

Bang and Olufsen (this is one brand not two)  and Goldmund

check out their links and you'll find out why they are one of the leaders in high end speaker systems    

check out the links to see their high end ultimate speaker systems!=]

Answer 7

It's all a matter of taste, but from my experience over the last 25 years, I would rate the brands you've mentioned in the following order...

B&W

Jamo

M&K

JBL

Bose

Also, from that list, Jamo offers more bang for the buck if you are comparing similarly priced speakers side-by-side, but when you get out of the Jamo price range, B&W has it covered.  Bose is just "overpriced convenience" IMO.

I have also included websites to a few speaker companies that I have found to be even more musical than even B&W...

Happy listening!

Answer 8

The only decent make you've listed is Bowers & Wilkins, I would also consider Epos, Dali Ikon and Monitor Audio.

All will give superior performance to those listed, especially Bose. It's worth noting that even Bose in their brochures don't refer to the term HiFi, it's home entertainment, and overpriced at that!