This year at InfoComm 2014 Harman has expended their JBL Commercial Mixer-Amplifier line to make them incredibly desirable for the entry level "prosumer"/SMB market. They have redesigned this line to utilize Crown’s DriveCore chips and respective technology to create a great new line of SMB commercial amp mixers.
Harman included many end-user sensitive features that make this product an easy spec.
- Harman has realized that most of the locations wherein many of these products are being installed are consumer centric and have redesigned these mixer-amplifiers to be very ascetically pleasing to that market. By using the DriveCore chips and subsequently a fan-less design, these amps are incredibly quiet and can be used in many noise-sensitive environment.
- Harman also included many end-user sensitive features that make this product an easy spec, including user friendly concepts like lighted pots, input sensing colour changing input pots, LEDs on each volume pots that hit red when clipping. One thing that was surprising to me was that this is one of the first ENERGY-STAR rated commercial amplifiers that I know of. While not seemingly common in our industry, it can be very important to the end user. It is also of interest to the LEED side of the construction/building industry. These products have the standard three year no-fault warranty.
- Lastly, JBL has updated their EON line (finally) and completely redesigned the speakers to look like, well, speakers. With a ground up rebuild with many great new features, JBL has brought some serious power to the portable market. With built-in selectable EQs and bluetooth control over those EQs, these new eons are really easy to use.
