Like Subwoofers? Hate Cables? JBL Has What You've Been Looking For!

Hi All,

Every year new audio products are announced and every year you can immediately ignore a lot of what comes out. Unless an audio product offers a benefit more than just great sounding output, it simply goes on the shelf as "just another audio product" for sale. Well, I'm always looking for newer products and, specifically, newer products from brands I trust that are delivering more than just sound out of a box.

All hail the arrival of the JBL wireless subwoofers! Two models, a 300-Watt (RMS) 10-inch and a 400-Watt 12-inch, provide you with great sounding products you can use in your home conveniently. No more running a subwoofer cable around and behind furniture and no more cutting carpet and running cable under there either. Now you can just connect a short cable to the transmitter, hide that puppy (keeping a line of sight available is recommended here) and set the subwoofer anywhere you can reach the power cord to.

JBL's not the first to have this technology out there, but they are one of the bigger names to push forward on this front and I applaud them for doing so. Home audio equipment is a highly personal purchase and one that supports a complex niche drivin market of both small and large brands offering everything from ultra-tiny and underpowered speakers to the biggest speakers you can dream up that will drive anyone out of the imediate vacinity. And it's here where I believe these speakers can be successful - a family home that has no ability to create a dedicated home theater space and needs to be able to combine technology and life in the same quarters.

And let me tell you these things sound great. JBL subwoofers have always offered a lot of bang for the buck, but in reality they have also always been some of the best product on the market. These new wireless subwoofers follow right along this strong heritage. Adjustable crossovers allow you to alter the subwoofer to your liking and, if your're considering an upgrade or a new home theater, these really compliment the rest of the JBL ES series speakers very well.

The wireless feature has pretty decent range and flexibility to it, allowing users to place the subwoofer in just about any typical home theater position. That said, it is a 2.4 GHz transmission so, even though I have not heard interference when using these, I would imagine that if you have a lot of 2.4 GHz signal in your home from phones or other electrical equipment you could run into some signal interference and need to adjust the system's location or the location of the interfering device(s). Also, depending on the construction of the home, the 2.4 GHz clarity and range could suffer given the right conditions. But I would imagine that 85% - 90% of the customers who purchase one of these units are not going to even have to think about signal interferance.

An easy plug and play setup leads to a lot of listening enjoyment. If you don't already have a subwoofer or if you are using a small passive subwoofer because you had no place to put one or didn't want to run cabling around your living space, I would strongly recommend considering this as the solution.

Check it out at JBL's website. My friends at Best Price Audio Video have these at a great price right now, too.

Cheers!