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 December 15, 2007 JansZen Model One Loudspeakers
A little over a year ago, I felt some tightness in my lower back -- probably the result of too much driving in the previous three days. So I went to the gym for my regular workout, but, instead of jumping right into it, I decided that a longer warmup would be more prudent. In fact, I thought it would fix me right up. Then, just moments into my warmup, I felt as if someone had knifed me in my lower back. I was down for the count. I thought I could shake it off, but I couldn’t. Over the next few weeks, the symptoms got worse. The pain was no longer periodic but constant, and so severe that I couldn’t bend over to pick anything up. Obviously, I sought treatment, but my recovery has been long and tedious. What does this have to do with audio? My recovery has been so slow that, for the past year, I’ve had a new review policy: nothing heavy unless the manufacturer delivers it and sets it up himself. Enter David A. Janszen and his huge Model One loudspeakers, which weigh 150 pounds each -- about the last thing I needed to review. David is the son of famed American inventor Arthur A. Janszen, who died in 1991. In the 1950s, AAJ unveiled his first consumer-targeted electrostatic loudspeakers, the JansZen Laboratories models 65 and 1-30 -- according to DAJ, the first commercially practical electrostatic speakers. In the years that followed, AAJ worked on some notable products, such as the KLH Nine, and licensed some of his designs to other companies. In the last 30 or so years, however, the Janszen name hadn’t done much in high-end audio to write home about. So in 2005, DAJ decided to revitalize the family name by forming JansZen Loudspeaker, Ltd. DAJ is the president and designer, and his new Model One can be thought of as a modern application of his father’s original ideas -- and then some. But when DAJ asked me to review the One, I quickly thought, "No way -- my achin’ back!" I recited my policy to him, sure he’d back down and that that would be that. But he was persistent -- he wanted me to review the Ones, he wanted us to measure them, and he assured me that he’d be happy to do all the lifting himself. I had my doubts about the last -- DAJ’s not that big, and I don’t think he’s any younger than I am -- but I decided to take him at his word. And if he didn’t show up with the Ones, I was content to leave his speakers in the driveway. But DAJ was true to his word, installing the Ones in my large, third-story listening room -- twice. Description There’s a lot to the Model One. In fact, it’s one of the most elaborate speakers on the market, even if its complexity isn’t obvious at a glance.
The One is a hybrid design. The tweeter and midrange are electrostatic drivers of JansZen’s own design, and there’s more than one of each. If you look closely at the front of the speaker, you can see that each of the three electrostatic panels (they’re lined up vertically) comprises, side by side, one tweeter and two midrange drivers, for a total of three tweeters and six midranges in each One. The woofer, however, is not electrostatic, but a 12" cone from TC Sounds that works in a sealed enclosure that David Janszen chose for its ability to reproduce deep bass with low distortion. DAJ’s reasoning for using different driver types makes sense. He contends that electrostatic panels are superior to conventional cone drivers, at least for the midrange and high frequencies, because of the nature of their design. An electrostatic driver’s flat membrane is extremely thin (about 1/10 the thickness of a piece of paper) and far lighter than a cone, which means it can start and stop quickly when activated by an electrostatic charge, with next to no "overhang." In short, it’s lightning fast. But according to DAJ, not all electrostatics are created equal -- so you shouldn’t assume that any electrostatic-based speaker is automatically better than a conventional cone design. In fact, DAJ believes that most ’stats are flawed -- and, of course, that his own are the exception to that rule. Part of the JansZen company’s claim to fame for their electrostatic drivers is proper damping of the panel, something DAJ claims is lacking in almost all other electrostatic designs. If a panel’s not damped properly, it can move uncontrollably, resulting in erratic behavior. However, electrostatic panels aren’t so good at bass -- they just can’t move the volume of air required by low frequencies in as forceful and controlled a way as a good woofer cone can. For example, I’ve often heard MartinLogan’s CLS speaker -- a large, full-range electrostatic panel that uses no dynamic cones of any kind. Bass? It has none. I think David Janszen is wise to use a cone. The One uses first-order crossover slopes to preserve phase accuracy. The woofer is crossed over to the midrange panels at 225Hz -- low enough that the woofer’s output is still omnidirectional, which makes for a good blend with the midrange panels, which have wide dispersion at this frequency. The midrange hands off to the tweeter at 1kHz, a lowish frequency chosen to remove the crossover point from the frequencies that lie above, where the ear is more sensitive. Techies might like the way electrostatic panels look, but most people don’t. Therefore, the One comes with a large grille that does a nice job of covering everything and a relatively good job of remaining transparent to the sound. But, like almost every grille on the market, this one mucks up the sound somewhat, particularly in the highs -- with their grilles on, the Ones sounded duller. For this review, I did my critical listening without grilles. The One is also active, which means it has its own built-in amplifier -- three of them, in fact, for the bass, mids, and highs. You drive the One with a line-level signal, such as that from a preamplifier -- or even, as David Janszen does, with an iPod. (RCA and XLR inputs are located at the very bottom of the rear.) Janszen chose class-D amplification for its high efficiency; i.e., high power output, low power consumption, and little heat produced. For the woofer there’s a 500W B&O ICEpower module, while the midrange and tweeter sections have 100W amplifiers based on components from Zetex. The woofer amp uses a linear power supply, while the midrange and tweeter amplifiers use switching supplies. All three amplifiers are internal -- you can’t see them. (I like well-designed active loudspeakers. They take the guesswork out of matching amps to speakers, which can be crucial to getting the best performance from a system. They also have another benefit few think about: because the crossover operates at line level, ahead of the amplifier, the amp is basically connected to the driver directly, which can mean better control.) There’s more worth mentioning about the One. One thing is the angle of the electrostatic panels on the baffle. It might look odd, but it’s done to reduce the diffraction problems that would occur if the panels were mounted straight up and down. With the panels set at an angle, there’s a constantly varying distance to the side as you move up the midrange and tweeter drivers: the waves emitted from each point on the panels travel a different distance to the side. Smart. In addition, each pair of Ones is made up of a left and a right speaker, despite the fact that each speaker’s panels are angled the same way. (DAJ told me that in an earlier prototype he tried angling the panels toward each other, but this created odd sonic artifacts.) The difference is in the orientation of the tweeters: The left and right speakers both have their three tweeter elements along their inside edge. One last thing that differentiates the One from most other electrostatics is that it’s a monopole. Most electrostatic designs are dipoles -- open on the front and back, they simultaneously push air to the front and rear, out of phase. While this results in a sound that can be larger and more spacious than that of a traditional front-firing speaker, great care must be taken with regard to room placement. In general, dipoles interact more complexly with room boundaries than do front-firing speakers. The JansZen Model One, however, fires only forward. Although I’ve mentioned a number of the Model One’s technical features, I’ve only touched on most of them. I could have gone into much more detail in each area, and told you about such things as the controls that permit small frequency-response adjustments (which I never used), the phase-inversion switch, and other tidbits. However, I’ve discussed what I believe is important. (If you want more, go to www.janszenloudspeaker.com and read their White Paper on the One.) Overall, I was impressed by the thought that has gone into the Model One’s design. There’s an obvious desire to create an advanced, room-friendly, plug’n’play, full-range loudspeaker using the JansZen company’s unique driver technology. Most products I review are either brand-new samples, or are from companies whose products I’ve seen on store shelves or at shows. Therefore, I know exactly what the customer can expect to see delivered to their door. The Model Ones I reviewed were the demo units David Janszen trucks around the country, and they were pretty banged up. Besides, this was my first experience with a product from JansZen Loudspeakers, a relatively new company -- I’ve never seen a pristine pair of Model Ones. What this means is that I can’t comment on fit’n’finish -- an important thing to consider for a speaker costing $32,500/pair. Setup Active loudspeakers require a system of striking simplicity. In fact, David Janszen wanted me to just use my iPod and a set of cheap interconnects -- he pulled out his own iPod and proved to me that it would work just fine. But I used the Ones with a Simaudio Moon Evolution SuperNova CD player and P-7 preamplifier, some of the best electronics you can buy. Balanced Nordost Valhalla interconnects went from CD player to preamplifier, while single-ended Nordost Quattro Fil interconnects went from the preamp to the Ones. That was it. The Ones sat where all the speakers in my room do: about 8’ from the front wall (you don’t need to go that, but in my room I have the space), 5’ from each sidewall, and about 8’ apart. The toe-in was about 15 degrees. Sound, part one Here’s why David Janszen set up the Model Ones twice. On his first trip, he did as promised and set up the speakers himself. However, while unloading one of the crates from his trailer, he dropped it off the gate. He figured the speaker was durable enough to take this sort of fall, but when he got it up to my room and opened it up, he found that a part had been sheared off. He bolted it back into place, gave a cursory listen, concluded that no damage had been done to the sound, and left those Ones with me to experiment with for over a month. I admired much about that first set of speakers. The bass, while not prominent or overblown, was very deep. And the highs, while quite extended, were never too forward or bright. Mostly, though, I was smitten by the midrange. I’d never heard a speaker with that kind of clarity through the midband; the One’s detail in that region was second to none. I pulled out all my favorite vocal recordings and played them for hours, every day. I also liked that, despite its electrostatic panels, the One didn’t exhibit the anomalies I hear from most panel speakers. For example, I could walk all around the One and hear no drastic changes in tonal balance. Furthermore, the pair of them had quite a wide sweet spot -- not just a single central seat where they sounded right. In fact, in that regard, the Ones were more like a conventional set of loudspeakers, which I quite liked. However, there were problems. DAJ had assured me that the Ones could play loudly, but many times, when I cranked them up even a little bit, I sensed they were straining. Furthermore, when the Ones reached a certain volume level, I could hear strange anomalies at specific frequencies that were akin to the sound of an amplifier clipping, particularly in the upper midrange, and most noticeably from the unit that DAJ had dropped. Finally, when DAJ came to see me again, we did some tests in the NRC’s anechoic chamber and found high levels of distortion at certain frequencies when the One was pushed hard to deliver higher SPLs. DAJ figured that something else had broken, perhaps when he’d dropped the speaker, or even during the drive in the trailer -- the samples were subjected to a lot of rattling around. He took that pair back to repair them, vowing to return and set them up again. Sound, part two And return David Janszen did, with the same pair of Ones -- according to him, not merely repaired but improved. He said that he’d remedied the problem by rebuilding the inside and, as well, made some changes that he’d been planning to make anyway, mostly to decrease distortion while increasing the overall output level. Once again, I didn’t help him set them up, though I noticed that he treated each One gingerly as he removed it from his trailer and carted it upstairs. He was leaving nothing to chance. We set them up in the same positions as before. From the first listen, I heard pretty much what I’d heard from the first pair, but a few things were better. This time, the Ones indeed could play much louder -- louder than I needed them to -- and at no time could I excite certain frequencies to get that strange "clipping" sound. I was ready to review them -- again. Once more, it was the One’s midrange that blew me away. One word I like to use to describe the character of a speaker, particularly the mids, is transparency, by which I mean a speaker’s ability to let the listener see farther into the recording. A pair of highly transparent speakers sounds so crystal clear that they let you see into what’s been recorded without obstruction. In contrast, speakers that sound muddy, chesty, or confused will obscure that view; they have low transparency. The Ones were the most transparent speakers I’ve heard through the midrange and into the highs. They not only allowed me to hear the microscopic details of recordings, but created a soundstage that began at the speaker plane and went farther back than the front wall, creating sonic images that were at times breathtakingly realistic. I can’t imagine that a dipole speaker could really sound more spacious than these. To date, the only other speakers I’ve heard that can match the Ones’ sense of space are Mirage’s amazing OM Design OMD-28s, a forward-biased model that radiates sound a full 360 degrees. However, even the venerable OMD-28s don’t have quite the Ones’ image specificity. For example, playing "Society," from Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack music for Into the Wild [CD, RCA 715944], was nothing short of astonishing. On this recording, Vedder’s voice and the accompanying guitar are captured with startling clarity, each placed distinctly on the stage. The engineer has ensured that lots of room ambience was captured. As a result, there’s lots here for a good stereo system to unravel, display, and show off with. The Ones did all that -- but they also did something rather uncanny. The sense of space the Ones created with "Society" seemed to match the size of my room precisely. It was as if the room that Vedder was singing in was exactly the same size as my own. As a result, the spatial information that was recorded, such as wall reflections, seemed to be coming from my own walls. Furthermore, the Ones played back all this musical information with such astonishing clarity and presence that it sounded as if Vedder was standing there between the speakers, singing, with the guitar alongside, and that the echoes and ambience were being produced by my own room. It was the closest thing I’ve ever heard to a two-channel stereo recording sounding real enough to fool me into thinking it was the real thing. Amazing. I heard much the same from the Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session [CD, RCA 8568-2-R], which, with the right speaker setup, projects an enormous sense of space. Here I wasn’t tricked into thinking that the musicians were actually in my room, mostly because the stage went beyond my front wall -- I mean, way beyond. I knew that I was hearing into another room. But if my room had been bigger, the Ones might have tricked me again -- their transparency and realism, particularly through the midrange, was mind-boggling. Even the best speakers I’ve listened to can’t match the Ones’ see-throughedness.
However, I could see that someone who played only pop or rock recordings with a lot of upper bass but no truly deep bass might think the One can’t go as low as it did. The reason is that the One, while going extremely deep, didn’t have the upper-bass boost at 100Hz or so that some speakers do. Speakers with such a boost tend to sound more forceful -- think oomph -- and can even sound more bass-heavy, even if their bass rolls off long before they hit 20 or even 30Hz. Speaker designers often use this trick to give the impression of deep bass without really reproducing it. The One was far more subtle in its reproduction of bass -- not unlike Aurum Acoustics’ identically priced Integris Active 300B speaker system. Both models present honest bass that goes deep, without exaggeration or lumps. The One’s presentation of the extreme highs was similar to what it did with the bass -- the highs didn’t pop out at me the way they do from some speakers. Or maybe it was just that the One’s midrange was so darn magical that the highest frequencies, no matter how clean, didn’t sound quite as special. Whatever the case, I found the One’s highs a touch subdued. Granted, this can be beneficial with overly bright or edgy recordings; many people do prefer a tame top end rather than something that’s too in-your-face. But, when playing absolutely pristine-sounding recordings through the Ones, such as Marta Gómez’s Entre Cada Palabra [CD, Chesky JD301], I found myself wishing for just a touch more air. That is my strongest criticism of this otherwise outstanding-sounding loudspeaker. Conclusion The Model One is a technically ambitious, full-range loudspeaker that, on the whole, sounds extremely good, and certain aspects of its performance are better than anything else I’ve heard. Its midrange presentation is to die for -- so clean, clear, and detailed that I’ve found it tough to go back to "normal" speakers. Likewise, the way they can lay out a soundstage with such vastness and precision is spellbinding. I haven’t heard another speaker that can match it. The bass reaches extremely low, which is rare even among very large speakers. Finally, I liked the fact that the Ones weren’t finicky with setup. Unlike some big speakers that can be a bear to set up right, the Ones were as easy to place and make sound good as any well-designed speaker I’ve had in my room.
The Model One isn’t perfect -- I’d especially like a bit more airy detail in the top end. Furthermore, it’s expensive -- $32,500 isn’t pocket change. But that’s less a gripe than a word of caution; after all, some of the most well-regarded speakers in the world cost considerably more. Besides, given that the One is a full-range, fully active design, some might actually consider it a pretty good deal for a little over 30 grand. My only concern is that the pair I saw weren’t new, or even close to it. I’d like to see a pristine pair from this new company before I give an unqualified recommendation on their appearance. All told, the JansZen Model One gets an enthusiastic but guarded recommendation. If you’re shopping for state-of-the-art sound and have this kind of money, make sure you have these on your shopping list. The Model One does many things right, some things better than anything else I’ve heard, and is worth seeking out to see what this new old company now offers. My back still aches. I suspect that, after the trips to my house and those three flights of stairs, David Janszen’s does too. But I’m happy he persisted, and that I reviewed the JansZen Model Ones. Had I known what I was in for at the start, instead of trying to discourage him from coming over, I might have tried to find a way to help. …Doug Schneider JansZen Model One Loudspeakers JansZen Loudspeaker, Ltd. E-mail: info@janszenloudspeaker.com JansZen Loudspeaker, Ltd. responds: First off, we are very pleased with Doug Schneider's review. We feel that he wrote an exceptionally clear and engaging article that nicely captures his observations and understanding of our flagship speaker. He demonstrates that we met our goal, which, if I may belabor it, was creating an unparalleled musical experience at a high level of convenience without involving the listener in the underlying complexity. Aside from being a pleasure to work with, we believe that his critical ear, audio expertise, and high level of impartiality make his words especially credible. Our only hope is that his value rating for the One would be higher if the speakers had come straight from the production floor! There are several aspects to the measurements that will probably not be evident from the more usual standpoint: viewing data from a dynamic speaker with an external amplifier. There was also an anomaly that should be explained. For these reasons, I am offering the following discussion of the plots. Frequency response The single-microphone frequency-response plots demonstrate the primary advantage of damped membranes, which is a complete lack of the usual ESL comb-filtering spikes. Also, these plots show wide dispersion, even at 10kHz, which helps create a degree of soundfield uniformity that is unusual for ESLs. The listening-window frequency-response plot, which combines the data from five microphone positions, better represents dispersed sound in a room. It shows that the overall frequency response is fairly smooth and flat, with variations that are small compared to those normally created by the acoustics of a listening room. The overall response characteristic, which has a slight downward taper with increasing frequency, mimics the ambient absorption characteristics for a position in a concert hall among the front rows. We feel that this taper is helpful in maintaining naturalness, particularly at high SPLs. The drop-off in bass is due to the lack of floor reinforcement in the test chamber, an inevitable result of suspending a speaker in mid-air while surrounding it with highly absorbent surfaces. Frequency sweeps at 90dB at 2 meters Before discussing the THD+N and DFL data, an explanation is due for the periodic power cut-out that is evident above about 13kHz during the frequency sweeps. This is one of those things that may look bad at first, but is actually a side effect of good, conservative design. It was caused by overload protection in the tweeter amplifier. A power limit is wise for this amplifier, because the impedance of an ESL goes down as the frequency increases. High-amplitude signals above 10kHz will never be present in music or soundtracks. They might be created by certain equipment malfunctions, however, so they should be guarded against. In the test chamber, the signal is swept at full amplitude all the way to 20kHz, and in the last half octave, this triggers the protection. A protection threshold that causes cut-out under these conditions is acceptable in normal use, because above 10kHz program material consists primarily of overtones, which are low in amplitude. The plots demonstrate that the protection circuitry works properly, setting and resetting itself several times at a consistent point during several slow sweeps. The protection circuit is never triggered by music, even under the roughest conditions, such as when the amplifiers are clipping on techno-pop and hard rock, filling a large room with a hazardously loud 100dB soundfield. Doug's own experiences afterward in his listening area attest to the appropriateness of the threshold as well as the survival of the amplifiers. As a matter of potential interest to the most observant readers, the reason that the protection circuit was not triggered during the 90dB frequency-response measurements was because the SPL during those sweeps was 3dB lower. This is accounted for by the "measured at 1m, plotted at 2m" notes in the plot headings. The SPL difference is 3dB with each doubling in distance from line arrays such as the JansZen One (6dB from point sources). THD+N The THD+N measurements were unaffected by the protection-circuit cycling, which occurred above the measurement range. The plots reveal a generally very low level of harmonic distortion. THD from the ESL module is below scale through most of its range, and distortion from the woofer is low for a dynamic element. The increase in distortion from the tweeter toward the top of its range is related to amplifier limiting under the increased loads that ESLs present at higher frequencies. A small amount of high-frequency THD at high SPLs is of little practical concern, because program content at these frequencies comprises the natural overtones of the instruments, and these are present at low amplitudes. Also, harmonics of signals over 10kHz are ultrasonic and inaudible, at least to humans. Still, the tweeter amplifier has been refined since then to keep the distortion below scale throughout the audio band at high SPLs. Deviation from linearity The JansZen One's deviation from linearity is minuscule throughout most of the measurement range. The bump at about 55Hz is by all accounts inaudible. Our sincere thanks go out to Doug Schneider and his staff at the SoundStage! Network for an excellent article that makes us glad he was willing to undertake the evaluation, and proud of having developed the JansZen One in the first place. Best regards, David Janszen
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One thing is the price:
$32,500 USD per pair. Another thing is the tall cabinet of extruded aluminum that makes a
pair of Ones a rather imposing sight. It’s made more domestically acceptable by its
rounded back, real-wood veneer (over aluminum), and the light-colored metals on the front.
Still, the One is big. It weighs almost as much as I do -- 150 pounds -- but is
actually taller, wider, and thicker: 72"H x 19"W x 12"D.
The Trinity Session
also told me plenty about the One’s bass, which could be a little deceiving if
you’re not adept at discerning deep bass from overblown upper bass. Basically, the
Ones went exceptionally deep, and that deep bass stayed very tight even when driven
extremely hard. On the two opening tracks of The Trinity Session, my room swelled
with deep-bass tones that pressurized the room. I don’t know of any speaker I’ve
had in here recently that goes deeper than the One did. Without doubt, the One can be
considered full-range -- meaning that it delivers down to almost 20Hz.
