I have 5 of the now long discontinued JBL SLR 2328 with the 8 inch woofer (plus a separate subwoofer). They are the predecessor of the current 8 inch 3 series. I like them, their weak spot is that after a couple of years due to the use of cheap electronics in the power unit they start buzzing at 50 Hz. I had each of them repaired, probably spent at least at much on that as the original purchase price.
Looking at Kali LP-6, IN-5, and Adam T5V, T7V. Also, because of the little one running around we are considering replacing the B2031A’s in the living room (on stands) with floorstanding speakers. They are sturdy on the stands, but she is getting around and pushing and pulling on everything. I should give those a go again for tracking/mixing. I remember having to correct the response with eq quite a bit, especially in the bass, and I seem to remember some high mid ringing, which I never notice when listening to music in the living room. But two good things about the B2031A’s are no cheapy class D amps and no DSP.
And on the JBL 305P MKII’s, I’m pretty sure that I’m noticing some rattle from one of the backplates that coincides with with their low mid resonance. I haven’t had free time to isolate exactly where the rattle is coming from, i.e, something in the room or the speaker, but I’m fairly positive that it is the speaker.
Seems hardly any time since she was a newborn keeping you awake at night.
Time flies when you’re having fun I guess 
Glad to hear she’s progressing well.
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It definitely is the speaker backplate rattling. Seems like I remember reading other complaints of the same thing with these speakers. So I guess that was short-lived, and I’m looking to upgrade in one way or another. I still have a measurement mic around here somewhere. I should probably just give those Behringer’s another whirl, correcting them best as I can. They are only about an inch deeper than the JBL’s, so they should be ok on the desk.
You’re telling me. She is anywhere and everywhere and in everything, like an erratic tornado with chubby cheeks. It was just a minute ago that she was living on her back.
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Catman (Ethan Winer) and lots of back and forth reading convinced me to try some HR824’s (mk2). Surely the speakers will be better than the junk being pushed through them. 
And $500 is the most I wanted to spend.
The o.g. HR824’s specs are +/- 1.5db for 37-20k hz, and that was tested to be pretty well true. I have that link somewhere. The HR824 MK2 has essentially the same specs with supposedly some improvement in extension, tightness in lower frequencies, and less forward sounding upper frequencies. One downside that Tapeop mentioned is that it’s easy to hear separation of the drivers due to distance between them for the waveguide.
HR824 MK2’s showed up, and I got them set up. One thing that I did not think about at all is dimensions. These things are fucking huge! 
I definitely have room on the desk (table) for them, but jesus christ.
I’m checking them out now. The enclosures are pretty damn impressive. Not cheap made in the least. First listening impression: Bass has good extension and clean. Sweet spot is wide. Top is well there, and it isn’t too brash.
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Yeah, once you get into the 8" speaker category, they’re more suited to large studio rooms, or lounge rooms.
The size factor is a large part of the reason I got the Nuemann’s.
Surprisingly I haven’t heard any lack in integration of the tweeter and woofer. Moving up/down and left/right seems fine. Response to small eq changes seems good too. But damnit, one of them has a low level distortion that is annoying at lower volume, which I didn’t notice right away. I may be back to square one again.
Should I assume that you’ve swapped the speakers around to make sure the distortion follows the speaker, and isn’t being caused by something else in your signal chain?
Or just something vibrating in sympathy with low frequencies that weren’t present previously.
Did you buy these new, or second hand?
Yea, of course I swapped lines. And I swapped the amp on the offending cab. It’s in one of the plate amps. After some reading on HR824/HR824 MK2 issues and eyeballing the plate amp(s), I’m going to take a chance on a recap. The store knocked enough off the price to prevent a return to make it worth the gamble and effort on my end. These speakers are pretty much exactly what I was looking for, minus the issue. The little tracking I have done using them, they seem to give honest playback of what was recorded.
Yeah. Always worth a go. Fortunately it’s usually relatively cheap and easy, and has an above average chance of being the problem.
It gives me a final tip-over to get a DE-5000 LCR meter (also tests ESR), which will mostly be paid for by the discount on the speakers. So I’ll go through and check the caps before replacing anything. Worst case here, I have to pay a service center to repair the 1 speaker. There is a local guy who could likely repair it, too, and he can probably do it at considerably lower cost. But I’ll take a shot at checking for bad caps first. If this were a speaker with class-D amps I would have sent it right back for a refund.
I’ve thought about getting something like that, but usually I’m too busy with managing things, and end up passing those jobs along to our technical contractors once I have a decent idea what the fault likely is.
Most of the faults I’ve diagnosed recently have been electrolytic caps that I only had to look at, or solid caps that were a dead short. It’s actually quite amazing how fucked things are before they make it to my desk.
In your case, it probably wouldn’t be that much effort or expense to just replace all the electrolytic caps without thinking too hard about measurements.
19 caps on that board?
I dunno. Usually when I look at electrolytic caps, and some of them are failing, I think, well, they’re all the same age so…
But if you want the diagnostic tools, hey, that’s as decent an excuse as any to get them.
I would have to look at my list again, but I think it was 23 electrolytics, with a small portion being the likely cause. So I’ll look at those first. Plus, I have wanted an LCR meter and an ESR meter for a long time, so this just gives me an immediate excuse to get a meter that does both. And I have some old tube amps that could definitely use at least the filter caps being checked. The bench fee for that alone covers the cost of the meter.
I got the LCR meter in the other day. After getting the pcb of the plate amp removed from one of the HR824 MK2’s and testing about 10 electrolytic caps, I already found 3 bad ones according to the data sheet value tolerance and dissipation factor max. Those 2 that were out for dissipation factor might have been inline with something else making it go over max though. Any way, that and the trouble of getting the pcb out was enough to decide to replace all of them on both speakers except for maybe the 2 big power caps for each amp, which tested fine and are accessible without much trouble. But if the price is low enough, I may go ahead and replace those too for peace of mind. Making a list has been the biggest pain in the ass out of anything so far.
And by the way, if you ever find yourself trying to remove this style of transistor from a heatsink, and it seems to be stuck, I figured out the trick. Clamp your pliers on each side at the top of the metal plate, and rock it gently side to side until it is mostly free. Then slowly pull it away from the heatsink. The transistors came loose pretty easily with the thermal pads fully intact. Just don’t slip and break the silicon with your pliers.
