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Kenwood JL-885 Speakers ?

T

turaipo

New Member
I am completelly new regarding speakers, and I have an opportunity to buy a pair of Kenwood JL-885 Tower Floor Speakers,
but I wonder if they are good or not. I already read awful review about kenwood recent speakers, but wondered if they made a few good ones in the lot. These ones are from 1993 and are sold at $25. Thank you !

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Yeah, those were "rack buddies" as I call 'em. Made as cheap as possible. If they're better than what you got, I say go for it. Check the surrounds for signs of rotting, crumbling, cracking.
 
Big Tuna said:
Yeah, those were "rack buddies" as I call 'em. Made as cheap as possible. If they're better than what you got, I say go for it. Check the surrounds for signs of rotting, crumbling, cracking.
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Thank you.
I'm not sure they are better than I have. Mine are old 55 watts audiosphere research from 78-79. Not high end speakers, but sturdy, and sounding good at high volume. I just wanted to upgrade in power, and I saw these kenwood 140 watts for sale in my area.
It's always tempting to buy big things like this for a little money, but at the end, I'd prefer quality.
 
Unless you're trying to make your ears bleed, you shouldn't need a power upgrade. Not that those Kenwoods can really take 140 watts anyway. I don't even consider a speaker's wattage as a selling point because 1) they're frequently exaggerated and 2) it's really not that important when making the choice. The wattage is just a rough figure of how much current you can pump through the voice coil. Sensitivity or efficiency is a much more important factor. It's a figure of how much sound output you get for a given signal strength from the amplifier.

I say either stick with the Audiospheres or wait until a better set of speakers shows up. These are not something I would pay even $25 for. If they were sitting on the side of the road, I'd grab 'em just to mess with. After all, you did say you preferred quality, right?
 
nick12345 said:
Unless you're trying to make your ears bleed, you shouldn't need a power upgrade. Not that those Kenwoods can really take 140 watts anyway. I don't even consider a speaker's wattage as a selling point because 1) they're frequently exaggerated and 2) it's really not that important when making the choice. The wattage is just a rough figure of how much current you can pump through the voice coil. Sensitivity or efficiency is a much more important factor. It's a figure of how much sound output you get for a given signal strength from the amplifier.

I say either stick with the Audiospheres or wait until a better set of speakers shows up. These are not something I would pay even $25 for. If they were sitting on the side of the road, I'd grab 'em just to mess with. After all, you did say you preferred quality, right?
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Thank you for the advice.
These concepts are pretty new for me, so your insight is appreciated. In fact, I don't really want a power upgrade, but I thought bigger speakers would have more room, amplitude, and thus a better sound, without saturation, when you push them a little. My audiospheres sound good, but lack a bit of clarity and details sometimes.

I'll let the kenwoods to their owner then.
 
Sure thing, turaipo. Those Kenwoods do almost certainly have higher SPL @ 1W/1M than your current speakers, but the only way for you to know how they sound is to actually hook them up and give them a listen.

Yes Nick, the newer speaker wattage ratings are extremely exaggerated, but not the older ones. The amp is where you need to take consideration of the wattage ratings. If you like music with alot of bass, you'll need higher watts to push the lower frequencies at a loud level, but don't push your amp to the point of clipping/distortion. I prefer to have an amplifier that exceeds the wattage rating of the speaker in continuous watts, that way the speaker can be pushed to it's limits with clean/unclipped signal, so no worries of underdriving with clipped/distorted signal, because that will destroy voice coils faster than you can say "oh, sh**!"

I listen to music with very wide peaks, and the higher power is necessary for that at a bit higher than moderately loud volume.
 
Remember that power handling is not directly related to sound quality -- what matters is efficiency. What you can about is the volume you can achieve before the speaker blows, and if the speaker is efficient, even a low power rating will give you the volume you want, but if its inefficient, than even high power handling may not be sufficient. You can make any speaker handle staggering amounts of power by putting it in series with a large value resistor -- sure you can run lots of power into it but all you are really doing is heating the resistor.
At the same time keep in mind that often efficiency comes from limiting bandwidth -- its a lot easier to be efficient if you don't bother with low bass.
 
Rack system speakers I say thumbs down. Be patient and wait for some JBL, Advent, KEF, Acoustic Research, ADS, older Polks, Boston Acoustics, Klipsch, B & Ws, Missions, tannoys, etc to come up on CL. If you can stretch your budget to around 150 you can get some NICE used speakers with patience.
 
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