which is a better speaker


I am looking to buy a pair of speakers to use with my 2265B Marantz which would be better Pioneer HPM 100 or Jbl 120ti

mike317

Showing 1 response by panzrwagn

Not a fan of either. Pioneers had a nice tweeter, but that's about it. JBLs were built better, but boomy and hardh. Find a pair of JBL L-110s ca. 1980. Those are killer, will be very happy driven by a 2265B. JBL got all the pieces right - it was the first ported speaker I ever heard with extended, tight bass. The soft dome tweeter was a vast improvement, and everything could keep up with the LE-5a midrange. Add to that mid and tweet level controls and impeccable build quality and you have a classic.   

As for the 2265, Marantz always had ballsier receivers because they had better power supplies and discrete transistor high current output stages. This was why they also tended to cost a bit more than the Pioneers and Kenwood's of the day.

I worked in a shop that sold tons of Advents, a speaker known to blow tweeters when pushed. The high watts/dollar receivers were heavily current limited to protect their wimpy output stages that only performed well into an 8 Ohms resistor. Rather than damage the output stage, current limiting essentially clipped the amp at a level low enough to not hurt the outputs and dumped the resulting trash into the speakers. This was marketed as a feature that protected the amp. We rarely saw blown speakers driven by Marantz and HK, blown tweeters were common with Pioneer and Kenwood receivers.