PETER CHAIKIN: Hi. I’m Peter Chaikin. I’m the director of recording and broadcast for JBL Professional. When we designed the LSR4300 Series, we took a close look at the market and we said, “We need to do better than just building a great powered speaker.” We can do that. That’s what we do. We build phenomenal sounding speakers. But you know what, there are a lot of changes in the market and there are needs in the market that we can address that really haven’t been addressed before.

Specifically, in the last 10 to 15 years, there have been three major changes. Change number one: We’re not working in control rooms so much anymore. We’re working in bedrooms, living rooms, garages, industrial parks. Number two, most of us are probably now producing audio using computers. That means that if we don’t have a large mixing console, we’ve given up some of the control and flexibility that we had before. Maybe our volume control, maybe we don’t have a volume control for the whole monitor system anymore. Maybe we don’t have the ability to listen to several sources at once. It used to be you could push a button on a console, listen to your mix, listen to your target deck, listen to other sources. So, maybe we don’t have that anymore. And the third thing is surround sound production is on the rise. Clearly, it’s very big in post production and film, and it’s coming up in music production now.

So, we looked at the market and we said, “Okay, we need to build the very best, most accurate speaker we can,” and we feel we’ve done that. The LSR4300 is a superb sounding monitor. The sonic performance is modeled on the LSR6300, which is the choice of top pros worldwide. And we’ve gone a step further. You maybe working in a room that doesn’t have acoustic treatment, specifically low frequency bass trapping. The room may have resonances, and sitting at the mix position, if you’re not hearing bass accurately, for instance if a bass note is jumping out and that’s caused by the room, you may pull that note back. But actually, when you ship that CD and listen to it in another player or a car or in the theater, that note is going to be missing because what you were reacting to wasn’t the way the bass player played. It was the room.

So, we actually measure the room and the speaker is automatically calibrated using an internal processor. We measure and automatically calibrate to compensate for low-frequency problems in the room. The LSR4300 is the first speaker system to incorporate an internal signal processor onboard that not only measures the room but automatically corrects for low frequency problems in the room, and it does it using a supplied microphone which we just plug into the back of the speaker. So, that’s how we correct for sonic conditions in the room. The end result is a much clear performance at the mix position. Vocals are not cloudy because you don’t have low-frequency muddiness that’s kind of booming things up. And again, if you go from room to room, you could take the same speaker, put it in two different rooms, and if it’s not compensating for problems in the room, you’ll get two different mixes. So, once you start measuring the room abd taking care of problems in the room, your mix will be accurate room to room, tune to tune, day to day. So, that’s the first thing that we’ve done.

But the next thing that is that we know that you’re working within the computer, and many I/O boxes don’t supply the kind of capabilities that we used to have on our consoles: a volume control, input switching, and other things that we used to have. Well, you’ll notice that when I press the volume button on the speaker, the volume is actually increasing on all the other speakers too. This is because the speakers are networked together.

This is a networked system. We’re using Cat 5 cable, and it allows us to synchronize the controls. So, now we have a system-wide volume control, and we also have input switching. We can listen to an analog input, an AES/EBU input, and an SPDIF input, so the speaker has two digital inputs and an analog input on the back of the speaker. Analog, SPDIF, AES/EBU. Analog, SPDIF, AES/EBU. So, if you connect your computer to one set of inputs and your target deck, your CD recorder to another set of inputs, we can switch between those at the press of a button. We can also EQ. We can add EQ. Low-frequency EQ we can boost, high-frequency EQ we can cut. We can turn the EQ on and off, and we can solo a speaker and mute all the other speakers. But because the speakers are networked together, we don’t only have to do this from the front panel of the speaker, we can use this wireless remote control.

you’ll notice as I hold the remote control, the volume of the whole system changes, so now I’m doing this from the mix position. Typically sitting at the mix position, you just point the remote directly in front of you and the speaker that’s marked left does the receiving and tells all the other ones up what to do. I can also change my inputs, and now I can listen to my analog, SPDIF, AES/EBU.

By the way, because the speakers are networked together, the left speaker knows to play the left side of the digital stream, the right speaker knows to play the right side of the digital stream. So, already we have corrected low frequency problems in the room. We’ve given you control with a virtual monitor section. By the way, if you wanted just the volume control and input switching, you’d probably have to go out and buy an outboard box that might cost you $400 for a stereo controller. If you’re now talking about a surround system, 5.1 system, that box can cost up to $2,000 or $3,000, and there are many on the market that only give you a volume control and input switching. We do it in the speaker, so every time you add a speaker it automatically logs on to the network and it can be controlled by this wireless remote control.

But the really exciting thing, since you work in the computer, since we all work in the computer, is we have software that allows us to not only do all of this but do additional things as well. And it’s the LSR4300 Control Center software, and I’m going to show it to you now.

We just walked over to our control center software, which is available on both Windows XP and Macintosh OS X format. We’re showing Mac OS X on this computer. You’ll notice when I raise the volume control, we hear music because I’m actually controlling the entire network of speakers. Not only that, notice these meters. They’re showing actually level for each speaker, and I can solo any speaker, and I can solo this speaker. I can solo this speaker, unsolo this one, and you’ll see because there’s no audio going to the speaker, it’s muted now.

So, from this Control Center software, we can control volume, input source, analog, SPDIF, AES/EBU. We can EQ the speakers according to our preference + or -2 dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, two bands of EQ. The neat thing is we can click on this, and we can actually see what the calibration did when we did our room mode correction, and actually I’ll run that in a moment. You can see how simple that is. But we found a problem in this room. It’s 62 Hz. That means that every time a bass player plays, I believe it’s an A, I’m not sure -- If he plays an A, it’s going to jump out, but using room mode correction, we’re able to solve that problem in the room.

There are a lot of other things that we can do with the software. We can change the brightness of the front panel of the speaker and turn the meters off completely if we want to just by clicking these little buttons. It’s kind of cool. We can save and load complete configurations of the system onto our hard drive so we can recall settings of the entire system. SPL settings: We can calibrate the system for 85 dB SPL using the sound level meter, and then store that and be able to recall that. That’s very useful. Of course we can some fun things. Let’s change the background and the listener. Let’s give the listener a ponytail. That’s important.

By the way, if you click on “About This Software”, it takes you to this window, and I can click on the JBL logo, and it’ll take you to the JBL web site for technical support. So, LSR4300 Control Center software, whether you use it or the remote control or the buttons on the front of the speaker, you can control these speakers and dial them in to perfection at the speaker, from your desktop using the remote control, or using the Control Center software, and also get lots more information about what’s going on inside the system. And the key to that is our network protocol, Harman HiQnet, which allows the speakers to be connected to each other and then via USB to a computer.

That’s the LSR4300 Series. The one thing that we didn’t do is calibrate the speakers, and we’ll do a quick insert of that. Using this calibration mic, I just put it at the listening position, and I press a button on the speaker, the RMC button.

The speakers are calibrating themselves. We just press the button on the front of the speaker. We put a microphone at the mix position, and we measure the room. Microphone said, “Talk to me.” Speaker said, “Okay. I’m sending sound to you.” “What are you sending?” “Well, it’s -- This is what I’m saying.” And the microphone said, “Well this is what I heard.” The speaker corrects and that speaker’s tonic goes on to the next one. And by doing this, at the mix position, you get a much better frequency response in the low frequencies where the room can cause problems. And as a result, you know what kind of low frequency you’re putting into your mix. And that’s the process. It’s that simple: We connect the mic to one speaker, we push a button, and all the speakers calibrate themselves.

So, the LSR4300 Series, I didn’t mention, comes in two sizes. It comes in an 8” two way and a 6” two way. There’s 150 watts in the low frequency and 70 watts in the high frequency, and there will be a subwoofer coming in the spring, which is a 12”, 300 watts, and also can be networked. And the prices on these, they’re priced for project studios. Quite affordable, superb sonic performance, tackling the problems in the room, and giving you a lot more functionality using the remote control on the front panel and the computer than any other speaker on the market. Check them out. Your mixes will be happy. Thanks very much.