JBL Bar 1300Mk2 review

This is the mark two version of JBL’s top-tier soundbar solution, making it the biggest and most powerful of a newly-released range which rises from simple solo soundbars through soundbars with subwoofers up to soundbars like this, with ends that come off and turn into real wireless rear speakers.

And this rangetopping JBL Bar 1300Mk2 is the update of a product which won our Sound+Image Soundbar System of the Year for 2023. Much remains the same, or similar, in the new package. This is a good size of soundbar with a paired wireless subwoofer, and its very particular trick is that the two ends of the soundbar can be removed and resituated at the back of the room, where they instantly become battery-powered wireless rear speakers delivering genuine (rather than virtualised) surround sound. Not only surround indeed, also height – and with
real (or at least ceiling-reflective) height drivers at front and rear. So you can hope for true immersion from Atmos soundtracks that support it.

And there’s plenty more for the updated bar to do than merely deliver a banging movie soundtrack. The ‘JBL One’ app connects to the bar to enable music streaming, in addition to its control and customisation options. Also new to the Mk2 is a raft of new and improved technologies within the bar’s powerful processing – there’s not only simple EQ in this soundbar package but things like ‘SmartDetails’, PureVoice 2.0, and the inevitable ‘AI Sound Boost’.

The JBL bar is also generous in its rear connectivity – notably a full three external HDMI inputs in addition to the HDMI eARC TV connection, plus optical in. There’s Bluetooth, and networking to enable Google Cast, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, even Roon, for which the app offers a 60-day trial.

There’s also an entirely new subwoofer design here, as well as new drivers in the bar, more power all round – and still that remarkable claim for the overall delivered channel count: 11.1.4.

Countdown

That channel count of 11.1.4 for this soundbar system is quite the claim. But then look at the ‘X-ray’ picture above right, showing the astounding array of drivers ranging from the soundbar’s centre section to those removable ends. Some are angled; some aim upward.

There might be multiple possible ways to allocate channels among these many drivers. And we love a puzzle. But there didn’t seem quite enough information to be sure of what was happening.

Across the centre front section, facing forwards, there is a central tweeter flanked by no fewer than eight race-track drivers, four to each side, and another tweeter on each side beyond them. The three tweeters – all the tweeters here – are 25mm silk-dome units: these have gained neodymium magnets since the first version, neodymium being a much more powerful type of magnet, which thereby gives designers a choice of better control from the same size of magnet, or the same control from a smaller magnet.

Eight 75×50mm racetrack drivers is a heck of a lot for L, C and R channels, but they are accompanied by only three tweeters along that front surface, so it seemed unlikely that any hidden channels would lie between them. With our ear up to the bar, a centre test signal seemed to activate only the centre tweeter and a single pair of racetracks.

Beyond this extended LCR complement sit drivers for the side-surround channel, right at each end of the central bar section. More 25mm silk-dome tweeters for this, here angled outward, aiming to create a beam (JBL’s MultiBeam 3.0, to be precise) of side surround that will bounce off your side walls. This tactic generally works well in a long thin room, less effectively in a wider or acoustically unbounded one, but the two separately-angled drivers here may be designed to take this into account during the bar’s calibration process.

On top of the central bar section, near each end, are a pair of 75mm drivers for each front height channel, seemingly differentiated slightly in their upward firing angles, perhaps to create a wider arc of front height sound.

So on the main bar section, that’s L, C, R, SL, SR, HLF, HRF – five ‘floor’ channels and two height channels.

Then there are the ends that pull off, or rather now lift off from the Mk2. We like this lifting off; the new design requires a little more effort to remove, but it’s a lovely bit of engineering, with slots and rows of gold contacts locking together. The new method is also less likely to accidentally move the bar as you replace or pull off the ends.

You can then carry the ends to rear positions behind your listening area. Each end piece has two larger 90×50mm racetrack drivers, one forward-facing and one side-firing, with a little 50mm driver angled between them, plus an upfiring 75mm driver to match the height drivers of the bar.

Our initial assumption was that each end piece was providing one surround rear channel and a height channel. But that would tot up the full system to only 7.1.4. Where are the other four floor channels?

So of course we asked Harman, who had sent us the review unit, and they asked something called the BU, from which we were surprised to receive a response that “Due to confidentiality, we’re unable to share detailed information on the exact channel positioning beyond what has been communicated in our product materials.”

This worried us that there might be ‘virtual’ channels. We’ve seen systems recently which have counted ‘virtual’ speakers as part of their channel count. This is a total furphy: you might as well announce infinite virtual speakers. Any stereo system could be described as creating an infinite number of virtual channels. So when checking a claimed channel count, there’s a simple question: does every claimed channel have at last one specific dedicated driver?

We did suggest a possible solution here, where those end pieces might cover a separate surround channel with each of their drivers — three surround channels and one height channel in each little lift-off piece. It didn’t seem likely, but thanks to some much appreciated effort by the local Harman team, who seemed as keen as us to understand the count, JBL confirmed that yes, “for the 11 surround channels, the main bar in the front plays 5 channels with beamforming and each detachable speaker plays 3 channels.”

Add in the subwoofer, plus the four height channels, and the 11.1.4 channel count is genuine: nothing virtual, with at least one physical dedicated driver per channel.

Bass & power

The ‘point one’ of that figure, the bass channel, gets a new and rather impressive subwoofer, in some corners referred to as the ‘One Commander’. This is a rounded tube design, like a slice from a giant licorice stick; it replaces the single 10-inch driver of the Mk1 version with dual opposed 8-inch drivers firing out from either side of the cabinet.

Opposed drivers have the key advantage of physical stability, hugely reducing potential cabinet movement and vibrations. This is also a sealed design, with no ports, making it easier to accommodate; Harman’s team says they’ve been using it inside a cabinet, though you’d want a bit of space either side. And we didn’t realise until we later saw in one of JBL’s pictures (below) that it can be used upright, though on a small stand, since one of the opposed drivers will then be firing at the floor.

Without making accurate driver measurements (and the subwoofer is very sealed!), we can only estimate the Thiele-Small equivalent single driver in a way, but it would be something like a single 10.5-inch to 11-inch driver.

Sealed cabinets have some useful advantages: they can have a better handover to the higher frequencies, a smoother roll-off to lower frequencies, and the potential for delivering tighter and more accurate bass. The trade-off is the need for power, as sealed cabinets need far more driving than ported cabinets, and JBL says there is 1200W of power available to the subwoofer here. (All power figures, for sub and bar and rears, are quoted with 1% THD.) The complete power for the system is quoted at 2470W.

We should also mention that in the box you get a wall-mounting kit and template, as well as end caps to go on both the bar and the rear speakers when you remove them.

Rear versatility

JBL is not alone in offering wireless rears to expand a soundbar system into the realms of true surround and/or height, nor was it the first to come up with pulling the ends off a soundbar, as Philips pioneered the idea in its Fidelio soundbars a decade earlier.

But we can certainly say we know of no system where the removable/wireless ‘rears’ offer such versatility. Let us count the ways you can use them.

Firstly, of course, you could leave them in position on the bar, where they add power and potentially width to the soundbar’s presentation of TV or music playback.

Secondly you can remove them and place them behind and wide, to operate as rear and height speakers; they are also wall-mountable for this purpose via a screw-mounting point. Their internal batteries recharge automatically when they’re in place on the bar, a process which initially takes some four hours; it’s not clear how long they will last (it obviously depends on how loud you run the system), but the JBL One app usefully shows their remaining battery power, and if the battery power runs dry, “DOCK REAR SPKR” appears on the soundbar’s front display. Besides, you could choose to give them permanent power in their rear positions (especially if wallmounting them), via their USB-C power socket.

This power provision also enables their third function: each end unit can be taken away for use as a standalone Bluetooth speaker to be used anywhere you like. Press their Bluetooth pairing button, connect your phone (or tablet or computer), and off you go.

As a fourth option you can pair the two ‘rears’ together and play into them via Bluetooth as a stereo pair.

Numbers five and six are, we think, brilliant pieces of innovation. Firstly there’s ‘Broadcast’ mode, an option in the app: this simply extends the normal audio to the two ‘rears’ so you can, for example, take one with you into the kitchen (you have to stay within a reasonable range) and hear the TV perfectly in there. Like we say, brilliant.

And finally ‘Night Listening’: this initially confused us, as the explanation in the app reads: “Mute the soundbar and subwoofer to create a quiet environment.” Very quiet, you’d think – wouldn’t it be silent? Most such ‘night’ systems just stop the bass from the subwoofer. But no, it does mean zero sound from the front bar or sub, and instead the system plays entirely through the two detached ‘rears’. Of course this is a much reduced sound, but a great solution for playing TV at night without disturbing the rest of the home. That can often be a problem with big soundbar systems, especially their subwoofers.

This implementation goes significantly far beyond rivals, including the systems by JBL’s own parent’s parent Samsung, and even the new Yamaha TrueX package where the wireless rears double only for mono Bluetooth use. A real gold star to JBL for the implementation options of the rears here.

Setting up

It’s a good length of bar when the ends are attached – 140cm, the centre section about a metre wide, each end piece adding 20cm. It’s only 56mm high, so easily fits below most TV screens; we added some Sorbothane feet to lift it above the centre stand of the Samsung TV with which we were using it.

A first alert while unpacking – be careful when removing the bar section from the chair-shaped packaging. It is wrapped without either its removable ends or little end stops attached, and if you pick it up by its ends, as we did, your fingers can puncture the exposed domes within the open horn at the end. Our long fingers pressed into the dome at one end, but realising what it was, we avoided any damage.

Other than that, it was easy enough to position the bar and sub; the main limit on the subwoofer positioning may be the limited length of the 1.5-metre mains cable; we needed to switch this out for a longer one.

With the rears, firstly you have to position them correctly – an app animation usefully shows how to move them to the rear positions without turning around and swapping them; they also have clear ‘left’ and ‘right’ markings. You maintain left as left, right as right, but you spin them around so that their front drivers now face forward, towards the TV.

There’s also calibration onboard here, to employ once you have the detachable ends in their ‘rear’ positions. This is confusingly presented in the app because there’s no indication or acknowledgement of where your speakers should be at the end. The app’s instructions tell you to place them first immediately either side of the listening position, as on a diagram in the app (left screenshot above), and letting them whoop around for a while. Then for the second calibration, a second picture shows you where to place them “adjacent to the regular listening area” (right screenshot). More whoops.

But then if you move the rears to where you actually want to put them, how does the calibration know where they are?

The answer is in the full instruction manual (not provided; it’s online only). For the second calibration you should not put the rears where the app diagram shows, but instead put them wherever you’re going to be actually using them. In many rooms this might be non-ideal positioning – but the local Harman team confirms that the calibration can adapt for this. So unless they tweak the app, we’d say stick with the online full manual for the calibration process.

Does the calibration work? We can’t really tell you, as there’s no way to toggle it off and on again, to hear what it’s doing. The only way to cancel your calibration would be to do it again, or completely reset the bar.

An on/off toggle for the calibration setting would be a useful addition, if only to confirm it’s made things better, rather than worse.

Other technologies are also ‘always on’, with two of the three key new technologies in the Mk2 version Bar 1300 being simply part of the presentation, not selectable options. There is ‘SmartDetails’, a new Harman technology “engineered to reproduce even the subtlest audio nuance, from a soft footstep to the creak of a floorboard”. This was described to us as ‘AI detail enhancement’, bringing forward key sounds when there’s a lot going on; an example was given of hearing the keys jangling in the ignition of the Aston Martin in No Time To Die as Bond does some doughnuts.

Second is ‘AI Sound Boost’, described as delivering “powerful sound with less distortion”, likely related to some subwoofer control processing to avoid overdriving.

These can’t be selected or deselected: they’re just always working to optimise the bar’s performance. So again there’s no way for us to hear what they achieve, positive or negative. Neither technology even gets a mention in the full user manual.

One option is user-selectable: PureVoice, here in version 2.0. This is said to provide “clear, natural dialogue without compromising immersive audio effects”, so we expected the usual voice-enhancement feature which cuts bass and background and adds irritating sibilance to the speech in the hope of giving it cut-though. We generally advise people to avoid voice enhancement and rather get a better bar that doesn’t need it!

But JBL says this is different. Previously yes, that’s how roughly it worked, but now it’s far more intelligent, considering what’s going on in the whole soundtrack and only isolating and boosting dialogue when it needs it. Select it during a scene of dialogue only, and you can’t hear its effect. But select it when people are talking over action sequences, and it kicks in more obviously.

So this is a voice enhancer which could make a lot more sense. Kudos to JBL, then, for putting this ambient content consideration not only on this top-of-the-line soundbar, but across the whole range (JBL refers to this as their ‘Gen 4’ soundbar range).

And since we’ve already strayed into sonic reportage, let’s get some sounds playing and get into the real listening sessions.

Listening sessions

For casual listening, you’ll likely have the full bar playing at full width, with its end/rear sections attached. Obviously there’s then no rear surround delivery (and we’re promised that the Bar 1300Mk2 doesn’t slip into any Atmos virtualisation from the front only). MultiBeam delivery of side surround must meanwhile be limited by having one pair of the angled drivers covered by the end pieces.

But you still have more drivers up front overall, and still front height available, and certainly the bar does a great job of simple TV viewing where you don’t want things going whizzbang around you. There was a slight sibilant edge to morning TV speech, and surprising bass content in game shows and adverts (as is common with subwoofer-paired bars), so we found ourselves trimming back the bass level for such scenarios. The JBL One app puts a seven-band equaliser at your fingertips on the main page, so such tweakery is easy. (Multiple user memories might be a nice addition, for different types of usage.)

Volume control is also easy in a number of ways: via the small remote control provided, or via the TV’s remote control (this worked even when watching external sources through the bar’s inputs), and we were most surprised to find that our phone’s volume buttons also controlled the bar’s volume when using the JBL One app.

Watching the evening news proved the perfect time to pop off an end piece and try that ‘Broadcast’ system, taking one away to the kitchen to hear the news while cooking. It worked so well; we love this option!

There are some other buttons on that little remote, which don’t tie in with any options in the app. There’s an alternate bass control, which steps the bass through levels 1 to 5. There’s a rear level control for when the rears are in position: this does double up on an app adjustment that provides four levels of rear level, including off. Presumably this adjusts all three of the rears’ channels at the same time.

And there’s a button on the remote we didn’t understand at first; the button has a little ‘Dolby’ logo and again shuttles through settings for Low, Med, and High (no ‘off’ here). This is explained in the main manual as controlling the height channel levels, so ‘height’ might be a better label, given that Dolby does not mean only Atmos, and Atmos does not mean only height. Besides, it also works for DTS:X soundtracks, with which the JBL is compatible, even if there’s so precious little DTS:X in the real world that some soundbar brands, like Bowers & Wilkins, are saving on their licence fees by omitting it.

Full and powerful as the bar sounds up front, you’re buying this system for its ability to deliver genuine surround, so let’s lift off those end sections and put them in the positions to which we calibrated the system.

Their effect was immediately obvious, with sound coming from the rears even as we watched some tennis through the TV, a spread of atmosphere to the rears. And over the crowd noise we tried the PureVoice 2.0 again – now we could hear it raising the commentary just slightly over the crowd noise, just as needed, and no overbrightness. A cleverly implemented function, it seems.

Why was there surround? This was a stereo TV broadcast of the tennis, so the bar must have been creating the surround. So there is virtualisation, creating rear and height content all the time. Again no way to turn this off, but no worries: if you don’t like it, just notch the rears down to zero.

But when it comes to real Atmos, we reckon you’re more likely to be turning them up. As we’ve heard before on similar systems, the trick for a truly immersive soundfield is that you use real Atmos material, and you play it loud, or at least moderately loud. This was clear immediately when we played some Atmos music, which often gives quicker pointers as to what’s happening than the more artificial world of movie soundtracks.

Atmos music

We played Atmos music two ways, from Atmos Blu-ray discs playing into the bar from a Blu-ray player via HDMI, and Atmos streaming from Apple Music via an AppleTV 4K plugged into another HDMI input on the JBL bar (all those useful inputs!).

Apple Music also hosts some useful Atmos test tracks, especially those from 2L’s Morten Lindberg; his 7.1.4 test confirmed rear surround channels to be discreet, while the side surround channels of 7.1 were split between rear and front drivers.

We listened to some Beatles Atmos tracks, of which Giles Martin has now served the world in such quantity. When playing at only middling levels, the separation between the bass from the subwoofer and the sounds from the rears was too entire, and the immersive soundstage didn’t meld together. Even with the rears notched up, the bass was restricted almost entirely to the front staging. So McCartney’ bouncy bassline on Lady Madonna came firmly from the front, while rear content was rather too jangly and bright, the rear claps, voices and percussion emerging seemingly heavily tilted toward their treble contribution (of course of the eight channels crammed into those two rears, two channels have only a two-inch driver to support them).

But turn things up, and the system delivers much more of a whole picture; the bass steps up to fill the room, and the value of the Atmos mix becomes clear. Atmos music is magnificent through a full system, but it has to be a balanced system, and it’s common for systems intended primarily for movie soundtracks not to be balanced in that way, especially when using small satellite rears, rather than full-sized speakers; music suffers, and surround music fails. But here the JBL system proved a musically-adept performer, as you might hope from such a long-established hi-fi brand! Once turned up it could deliver an Atmos music mix impressively well. With our musical tests the subwoofer seemed a little soft on leading edges, and again with everything set flat it was generally too dominant in the mix for our tastes. But we just kept the app’s EQ tailing off the bass (this in a medium-sized room) to provide the best music balance.

With everything set nicely we could enjoy some new Atmos gems: a nicely-effective new Atmos mix of Eminem’s Stan (from ‘STANS’) with thunder crashing in the rears; two wonderful Atmos remixes of 1973 and 1975 albums from Roberta Flack, including a massive yet realistic bass pedal delivery on Killing Me Softly (“What’s that banging?”, shouted the missus from downstairs, somehow sensing the subwoofer’s dual-opposed contribution). Again the bass impact was slightly softly served compared with a hi-fi system delivery – yet overall still highly musical by soundbar standards. Listen to those strings on Flack’s Jesse!

We also used Spotify Connect and AirPlay to send music to the bar, which it handled (with or without its ends in place) nicely musically in stereo as well. There are also natural effects like ‘Forest’ and ‘Rain’ which can be allocated to the ‘favourite’ button on the remote, but you can also put a playlist or a favourite radio station under that button.

So it’s good for stereo music, but Atmos music is a whole new world; don’t miss it!

Immersive movies

But of course, for most users of the bar, it will be movies getting cranked through this all-dancing range-topping bar. There’s no ‘info’ screen available in the app to show what signal is coming in, so it’s a bit hard to know exactly what’s arriving, but it’s incredibly useful that when Atmos does arrive, the hidden display on the right side of the bar scrolls ‘DOLBY ATMOS’ across its four letter positions (and DOLBY SURROUND for lesser Dolby).

So it’s easy to know when Atmos is there for real, rather than simulated. Though it’s usually very obvious anyway, just by listening.

Take the ‘Snowman’s Coming’ opening to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, with its golden titles, wide atmospherics, and then the massive Vegas opening sequence: this must have used every driver the JBL has to offer! All speech was exceptionally clean in the front, even during the dramatic wildness of this montage; no ‘PureVoice’ required, though when we tried it, it did make speech slightly cleaner, again without messing with the complex soundtrack – an excellent implementation.

And it really could be cranked, despite complexity; the soundstage filled in, in every direction, and even rotating effects were fairly well swung around. Yet it could be subtle: we loaded the UHD Blu-ray of A Star Is Born, and during the café songwriting sequence the JBL system wove a real environment: radio playing in the background, traffic outside.

There’s a big volume lift in this movie between such scenes and the live gig sections – we needed the volume control close to hand while scene skipping! – but again the concert footage was delivered musically and impressively scaled, the rears providing atmosphere to the opening vocal on Shallow, then bringing up crowd effects as Ally walks to the mike. We will say that we’ve heard this sequence demonstrated on many a full home cinema set-up, and on the best of these you can hear her footsteps on the stage with utter clarity and even a sense of the wood she’s walking on. There’s none of that here – you hardly hear the footsteps at all, even when the volume’s well up. So that’s the difference between even the best soundbar systems and a full surround system that will cost many multiples of the price. True Atmos clarity, true linearity, costs a lot more, and requires a dedicated room. What JBL does here is to push a lounge-friendly form factor to impressive Atmos heights.

The soundtrack to Oppenheimer is a bastard: it fades up slowly from the beginning, so you set your levels accordingly, and within 45 seconds on top of a quiet contemplative rainy-night sequence it suddenly drops a sound-bomb underneath Oppy’s vision of atomic fire: we saw this in the cinema and it nearly took out our ears. If ever there was a soundtrack that needs dynamic compression in a real-world lounge-room setting, this is it – especially as director Nolan never redubs dialogue so speech is often slightly recessed, against bangs which are as big as bangs get.

The JBL system offers no level compression to flatten highs – and to be fair we don’t normally approve of this anyway. But it does mean you need to be ready for some big bangs if you set levels for audible dialogue. From that first sound-bomb, the subwoofer was mad with rumble; the one adjustment we returned to frequently was to tweak the bass balance depending on material. The default after calibration seems high, as if the new subwoofer isn’t taken into account, or just to maintain JBL’s reputation for the deep stuff.

But bass control aside, the JBL’s immersive Atmos sound drew us back into Oppenheimer so that we watched it again all the way through, still unteasing some of the political undertones as well as enjoying the wildly varying acoustic environments. The effect of the Los Alamos team all stomping on the boards to congratulate a successful Oppenheimer was massively effective through the full Bar 1300Mk2 system.

The ends alone

We also listened to the rear/end pieces alone, taking them away to play music. Unlike for some other systems, such as Yamaha’s True X,
taking them away reduces the main soundbar’s abilities; a compromise for those left listening to the uncapped bar. But they’re easy to slot back into place.

As compared with the bar’s networked capabilities for Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and Wi-Fi streaming via Google Cast and AirPlay, the ends alone are restricted to Bluetooth, and only the same SBC and AAC codecs as on the main bar.

But hey, JBL is the world’s leading maker of Bluetooth speakers, so perhaps it’s no surprise that they sound great. Even one end piece alone sounded remarkably powerful, delivering a beefy bassline and solid vocals up to medium levels; crank them high and some distortion creeps in, a little harshness when there’s treble complexity, but still great for their size, and genuinely musical. We had a JBL Flip 4 (several gens old) with which to compare it, and the single rear soundbar speaker absolutely trounced the Flip for power and scale of sound.

Two is even better. Pairing the two ‘rears’ in stereo wasn’t easy; it took us five times to get the connections to work (big thumbs, maybe). But it was worth it; it’s a bit more than twice as good as the one speaker alone, because these things usually are. During our travails getting this to work, we accidentally connected them via Auracast, our first Auracast/LC3 codec experience at home! (One day Auracast may take over the world, though we rather hope LC3 doesn’t.) This connection can also be used to link the ‘rears’ with other Auracastable JBL speakers, though all connected speakers will play in mono.

Verdict

We were pleased JBL finally explained its claimed channel count, so we can be confident there are genuine drivers here for each surround and Atmos height channel, including side-bouncing beams on the bar and a big new subwoofer, so that JBL’s Mk2 edition of the Bar 1300 most definitely produces genuinely immersive soundtracks.

The system delivered best when playing at least moderately loud, and since it can go very loud without notable problems, this is how we enjoyed it! The further ability to tweak bass, height and rear levels on the fly from the remote control makes tweaking to specific material easy, while the bar’s musical abilities make its direct music streaming useful.

And you have several bonuses from the detachable rear sections – not only surround and height, but the options for standalone Bluetooth music, kitchen listening, and night listening.

This premium soundbar market is not without impressive competitors, one notable example coming from JBL’s parent’s parent Samsung (which owns Harman), which designs its soundbars at a hi-fi-style laboratory in California just down the road from JBL’s HQ. Do they share ideas? Rather less than you might think, we reckon. The JBL Bar 1300Mk2 and the wider range shows how hard JBL has been fighting back to fully compete on sound quality, genuine immersion, bass (perhaps a little much of that) and especially musicality, a potential trump card for a hi-fi brand. This is a cracking soundbar system for the price, with intelligent features that keep its use relatively simple, while achieving thrilling immersive movie and music delivery.

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