Home > Consumer Reviews > JBL S-Center II Studio Series 3-Way Center-Channel Speaker (Dark Gray)

A 3-way center channel speaker?! At last, sensibility returns to speaker design - and with a stirring aesthetic as well. The JBL S-Center delivers lower pitched material with a clarity that you won't find in most 2-way speakers, and owing to the superior quality materials used in the tweeter (and seamless blending on either side of the midrange) the higher pitched material is never shrill. I've noticed a dramatic difference in DVD movies: In the past, lower pitched material coming from my subwoofer off in a corner would distract me from the screen, but this speaker's better bass response locks the sound back onto the screen where it should be. But where this speaker truly proved itself for me was in playing a DTS music disc. In DTS music, sometimes a lead vocalist's voice is sent directly to the center channel, and there is nothing like a human singing voice to test the range and natural-ness of a speaker. This speaker passed the live-or-die test with flying colors, sounding as natural as the original recording. Depending on the recording, you could swear the singer was standing in front of you in the flesh. The only negative for me was minor: the curved cabinet design precludes one from putting books (or in my case action figures) on top of the speaker. But the curves definately help decrease the amount of room the speaker used, so I can accept this. I've heard that the copper colored cones may be a limited feature (later editions perhaps changing to silver), but mine had them. They look fantastic and tempt one to remove the dust screen.

This center channel is very amazing. I bought two of these from the local best buy for front center, and rear center. They sound fabulous with my hk receiver. They really pack a punch like no other. They seamlessly blend with my four jbl s412p speakers. The bass is somewhat deep, deep enough for human vocals and dialouge.They also look sleeker and cooler in their new design. I would higly recomend this product.

My wife was asleep when I assembled our new home theater system. At the time, the only speakers I had was the S-Center and a subwoofer; the others were being shipped. When she woke up, she said it sounded like an orchestra was in the room.

This thing sounds wonderful.

I owned a Kenwood 2 way basic Center Speaker and I thought it was good enough for my Home Teather needs but how wrong I was. I hesitated to buy it 'cause "it's just a speaker" I though but once you heard it, you can't never go back. The low and High sounds are perfectly translated, even in night times I don't have to turn the sub-woofer on because it's jus unnecesary, the bass of this center channel rocks the bedroom by itself.

This is my favorite speaker out of my system (N38II's, N26II's, S-CenterII, PB12 [behind seat] and E250P [up front]). I almost got the N series center, and am I glad I didn't! This speaker actually keeps up with the rest, and sounds wonderful. You don't know how bad it is to own an under-sized center channel until you hear one the correct size. Don't scimp on it, make it the best speaker in the setup.