Founded in the U.S. in 1946 by James Bullough Lansing, the audio pioneer who also founded Altec Lansing, JBL is one of the most recognizable brands in the history of the audio market. Today, as a member of the larger Harman Audio family, the brand has a clearer definition as the product line targeting millennials and younger audio enthusiasts. Within this process of rediscovering its identity, JBL is now reissuing a series of successful products from its past, like the L100 high-end speakers, updating them with contemporary features. Along with these projects, the company still embodies a spirit of experimentation with innovative audio products that try to tackle many different segments of the larger audio market. We've picked seven of the most recognizable ones, and we've asked Damian Mackiewicz, Vice President of Design ·and Director of Design at Harman Audio, and Rafal Czaniecki, Director of JBL Lifestyle, to tell us a bit more about each one of them.
The most iconic JBL products of all time, as told by JBL designers
Over the last 75 years, the American company has produced some of the most recognizable speaker systems in the history of audio equipment. Here are seven of them and the story behind each one.
«This was when we were starting to explore some different concept of speaker portability», adds Mackiewicz. «To be honest, it wasn't the biggest commercial success, but it definitely taught us a lot. We also learned that despite the general excitement, a hybrid product with both a static and a portable nature was not the way to go».
«It was a quite difficult product to achieve, and we learnt a lot from it», adds Mackiewicz. «We had so many engineering questions to make the LED interface work as we wanted. On top of that, it was also tough to convince the company that we needed such a product back then. I'm really glad we insisted!»
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- Andrea Nepori
- 13 April 2021
«When we decided to relaunch the L100, the idea was to look into the technology. We were talking with engineers, asking, "what else can we build in? What's the latest technology we can add? How can we make them so that they're up to date with all the peripherals that you will use with these products» says Mackiewicz. «On design we didn't have to do much! They already look so contemporary, there was no need to redesign them. I wanted to keep the iconic 70s design. We improved slightly on the orange covering material, to make it more sound-transparent, to gain crispness. But yeah, besides that there was not much of a change on our side because they were already designed to be timeless back then they were released to fit into the mid-century modern home».
«These are the most high-end speakers JBL has ever produced, and that's still true with this redesign», says Mackiewicz. «This is pure physics. The design of these speakers is very much driven by engineering, they are a celebration of audio engineering. There aren't many loudspeakers with a front-facing woofer, for example, and they show all the components front and center, with that huge tweeter on top. For us designers, the goal here was to put together was the physics of sound required. We just decided to reveal the underlying physics of the object instead of hiding it.»
«The Voyager speaker was pioneering the idea that music could follow you», explains Rafal Czaniecki. «The main idea was to create a two-part speaker with a smaller element you can detach and carry with you around your home or in the garden. When you needed more power, or you needed to recharge the smaller speaker, you would dock it into the larger, cone-shaped base».
«This was when we were starting to explore some different concept of speaker portability», adds Mackiewicz. «To be honest, it wasn't the biggest commercial success, but it definitely taught us a lot. We also learned that despite the general excitement, a hybrid product with both a static and a portable nature was not the way to go».
«The Pulse, on the other hand, has been an enormous success. It was the first portable product where we could let people visualize the music they were listening to», says Czaniecki. «We asked ourselves: how can we enhance the experience of listening to music by making it more exciting, but not tacky, with an effect that would look fluid and natural?».
«It was a quite difficult product to achieve, and we learnt a lot from it», adds Mackiewicz. «We had so many engineering questions to make the LED interface work as we wanted. On top of that, it was also tough to convince the company that we needed such a product back then. I'm really glad we insisted!»
«What's interesting about the PartyBox speaker is that the soundboard on top turns it into a kind of instrument for very basic dj-ing», explains Czaniecki. «We had to learn about UX and UI programming, in order to make this an option that would enhance the experience of the product. We were quite late to the segment, we started selling this product in 2018. Yet, we're now at the top of it, with the PartyBox 1000 being the most sold partybox device in just three years».
«The Creature sound speakers for PC were definitely a product of their time. In that, though, they were distinctive», says Mackiewicz. «This was a lower-tier product than the more traditional Harman Kardon device we had in the same market. This was a time where you really had to differentiate through design in all tiers as an audio company. We explored different materials back then, and we started understanding what we could do with different shapes. We also did something we still do to this day: we look thoroughly at where the product is meant to live, to better integrate it into its environment».
«With the Soundgear, we wanted to create a product that could explore a completely new category of the audio market», says Mackiewicz. «It honestly came out of the sheer necessity of creating something completely new, like when someone put two speakers together to create the concept of headphones. Later we realized this device could have a very interesting application to Virtual Reality, to be paired with headsets and goggles. It's still a personal audio device, but one that won't isolate you so deeply like headphones, which in many situations can be an important advantage».