JBL, Inc., is featuring its JBL Control NOW• indoor and JBL Control NOW AW outdoor loudspeakers in an exhibit at CEDIA Expo 2008 that showcases their variety of installation possibilities. Both models feature a quarter-round shape that provides placement flexibility, and incorporate innovative driver technologies.

The all-new design of the JBL Control NOW loudspeakers enables them to be placed virtually anywhere. The drivers are mounted behind a curved quarter-round front section, and the rear of the enclosure has three angled sections that enable the speakers to be corner-mounted between a ceiling and wall or between two walls. They can also be placed either horizontally or vertically on a shelf. The JBL Control NOW loudspeaker has a black finish, and the JBL Control NOW AW speaker has a white finish.

Multiple JBL Control NOW speakers can be joined to create half-round, three-quarter-round or round configurations, and they can be hung from a ceiling using an optional pole-mount bracket and standard ceiling-fan hardware. In addition, the speakers can be mounted, using the included adapters, with third-party stands.

When used in two-, three- or four-speaker arrays, the JBL Control NOW and JBL Control NOW AW speakers can be configured for either single-channel or single-point stereo use for flexibility in a wide variety of home, multiroom, architectural and background-music applications, including in media rooms or kitchens and on decks or patios.

Exclusive JBL® Technologies

Corner-mounting, and some multiunit speaker configurations, can have an adverse effect on frequency response
across the listening area. For less-than-optimal acoustic situations, the loudspeakers feature a tweeter mounted in a patented JBL Bi-Radial® horn, and have a newly developed profile that minimizes diffraction effects from room surfaces. The speakers have constant-directivity dispersion when wall-mounted, and omnidirectional characteristics when corner-mounted or grouped in a four-speaker circular array.

The tweeter incorporates a 3/4-inch titanium-laminate diaphragm, and a ferrofluid-cooled voice coil driven by a high-Gauss neodymium-boron-iron magnet. The tweeter is complemented by two 4-inch woofers that incorporate dual neodymium-boron-iron magnets, which completely surround the voice coil. The design of the woofer's motor structure and suspension was optimized using Finite Element Analysis (FEA), a computer-analysis technique that is used to model complex systems (such as loudspeaker drivers) by breaking their intricate multipart elements down into smaller pieces, predicting the behavior of these elements, and then combining the behavior of all the elements to arrive at an analysis of the entire system.

The JBL Control NOW and JBL Control NOW AW speakers also feature enclosures and baffles made from a thermoplastic-composite material that contains both glass and mineral fill, which provides rigidity and damping. The enclosure's mechanical design utilizes thick walls, cast-aluminum internal bracing to minimize internal resonances.

The JBL Control NOW loudspeaker is currently available at a suggested retail price of $249 each. The JBL Control NOW AW is available at a suggested retail price of $279 each.

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