Looks great, sounds even better. Excellent high freq. Very pleasant, high detail sound. Emotional and clean.

Heavy music is not recommended for them.

I use these speakers for few months and I'm very happy - jazz, jazz-rock, art-rock, progressive plays great. I was not very satisfied by the heavy music sound on these speakers but, fortunately, it's not my cup of tea anymore. If you don't plan to listen grind-core or death-metal JMLab Chorus can be a good choice.

Similar Products Used:

Monitor Audio Silver, Aegis One

Coherence, High Quality treble, Accurate midrange voicing, Excitement, Bass Speed and Agility, Deep and defined imaging.

Box resonances spoil a class act.

JMlabs Chorus 706

In the hype driven world of loudspeaker marketing, the manufacturers would like for you to believe that bigger is better (otherwise how else could they justify the more expensive speakers and the multi-model lines that they are trying to push). I want to let you in on a little secret. It just isn’t so.

Audiophiles are well aware of this paradox, which seems to work in their interests. While the unknowledgable grossly overspend on big boxes and “features” that they will never need or use (thus keeping the manufacturers in business), audiophiles know that the most coherent speakers in any speaker line are usually the smallest and cheapest. The JMlabs Chorus 706 is no different. It’s a small, inexpensive David capable of taking on and slaying giants.

I created a David vs. the Goliaths shoot-out, by pitting the JMlabs Chorus 706 model against bigger and more expensive speakers in the JMlabs line, namely the Chorus model 707 and Cobalt model 706. I also pitted the tiny Chorus 706 against the much more expensive and presumably more capable B&W model CDM1 NT. I used YBA amplification and a Rotel disc spinner and brought along all my favorite speaker evaluating discs. After the dust had settled, however, you won’t be surprised to hear that only the Chorus model 706 was still standing. If musical coherence is the most important factor when judging loudspeakers (and it is), then the small, inexpensive JMlabs Chorus 706 is the senior model.

Using modern jazz recordings with a lot of tinkling treble and deep bass lines in addition to every conceivable type of instrumental texture, I was able to hear that the Chorus 706 sounded fleet of foot, clean and clear in the treble, very believable with mid-range instrumental textures, and very fast and extended in the bass region. Piano recordings sounded authentic. Orchestral recordings exhibited string tone that was very detailed but just on the right side of listenability. Recordings with a lot of percussion instruments like drums and cymbals revealed this speaker’s strongest talents, the ability to track rhythms with ease and just the right combination of speed, detail, and midrange accuracy to make these instruments sound exceedingly realistic. None of the other speakers in this shoot-out displayed the same coherence as the JMlabs Chorus 706.

After auditioning a speaker, I can create a mental “graph” of its frequency response. The most important aspect of this graph is its shape, which tells you much of what you need to know about how a loudspeaker sounds. This unique “shape” is analogous to the speaker’s voicing. Voicing is everything when it comes to loudspeakers. Some speaker designers can start with all the right ingredients of transducer design such as decent drivers and sturdy cabinets and yet their speakers still cannot recreate music convincingly. Whereas, others may start on humbler grounds, with less expensive drive units and a less well damped cabinet for instance, but still get it right. Clearly success in the speaker business isn’t just defined by quality parts and engineering. How you use the parts is equally, if not more important. Voicing is an art not a science, and the voicing of speakers should be held to higher standards than the merely empirical ones like measurements and parts quality. In the end the only true measurement of any speaker should be whether or not it recreates music convincingly. This may seem subjective, but I don't think it is, not when using live music as one’s ultimate reference. Listen to enough live music and pretty soon your ears can distinguish "live" sounding from "reproduced" sounding.

Looking at my mental graph of the shape of the Chorus 706’s voice, it’s bass is extended down to around 60 Hz (-3dB), which is low enough to jam effectively with rock and jazz music. The middle and upper bass (60 to 100 Hz) sound “flat.” JMlabs have not voiced the Chorus with a high Q port resonance so boominess is not an issue. Yet, there is enough clean extension to provide a firm foundation for each and every genre of music. The midrange from 200 Hz to 900 Hz in this model displays a gentle bowl shape, which produces just enough distancing of midrange musical information to give a sense of “space” around instruments and voices. The “lip” of the bowl between 1 and 2 kHz displays a slight lift giving a sense of immediacy to sibilants (‘s’ sounds) without going overboard. The “presence” band from 3 to 5 kHz sounds flat resulting in a lively, detailed quality, which sounds exciting with clean electronics and clean recordings but might prove a touch too revealing with electronics or source material that sound unruly or rough in this passband. These speakers require clean and neutral sounding partners. The lower treble from 6 to 10 kHz also sounds flat, so treble details in this region shine through. Crucially, however, the JMlabs inverted titanium dome tweeter is a high quality unit that does not ring in this passband like cheaper metal domes, so the treble quality remains high resulting in pure, clean extension in this region. The final treble octaves from 10 to 25 kHz decline gradually in output as frequency rises. JMlabs have voiced in a measure of “safety” here for budget electronics, which does rob the Chorus model 706 of the final bit of air, ambience and insight. For a budget speaker though, this is probably a wise compromise.

This “graph” does not reveal the speaker’s wide and even dispersion (especially at the crossover point), but my ears confirm this and it results in highly stable and detailed imagery. This is an area in which the tiny Chorus 706 shames much of its more expensive competition. On more than one occasion while auditioning the Chorus 706, I was startled by the realism of musical images within the speaker’s deep, tightly defined soundstage.

The frequency response graph also does not reveal this speaker’s greatest weakness, but my ears do. On wide-bandwidth, dynamic material (high SPLs), the box has a tendency to rattle and resonate. These box resonances muddle the musical picture. None of the other speakers with which I compared the JMlabs Chorus 706 had this problem, indicating that build quality does make a difference. Yet, the 706s sounded so much more coherent and believable than the other speakers, that I would be tempted to buy the 706s anyway and at the risk of invalidating the warranty, I would insert additional damping material to the inside of the cabinet like bituminous pads along the interior walls and more wadding to make up for the lost volume. These speakers are so, so close to greatness, it would be a shame to give up on them for an inferior sound with better build quality.

The Chorus 706 are lively, vivacious, coherent sounding speakers. They embarrassed the other models in the shootout and quite frankly they embarrass all but the very best speakers (a small minority – 6% of all speakers). I have questions about these speakers build quality, which I think that JMlabs could easily improve (but then that would negate the advantages of purchasing speakers from higher up in the line). If JMlabs won’t do it, then I suggest that anyone interested in getting the best from these speakers remove the main driver, line the cabinet with damping material and enjoy the fab sound that they are capable of creating. In the end the only true measurement of any speaker should be whether or not it recreates music convincingly. The skillful voicing of the Chorus 706 ensures this kind of believability.

Treble Extension ****
Treble Quality *****
Piano (midrange pitch accuracy) ****
Orchestral strings (midrange accuracy) ***
Percussion (bass, mid, and treble accuracy) *****
Bass Rhythm ****
Bass Extension (60 Hz) ****
Bass Quality *****
Coherence *****
Build Quality (would earn an extra two stars if box resonances were addressed) **
Overall *****

Similar Products Used:

JMlabs Chorus 707, Cobalt 706, Mini-Utopia, B&W CDM1 NT, Sonus Faber Concerto, Concertino, Electa Amator II, Mission 771, 772