Floorstanding loudspeakers — JM Reynaud ABCISSE JUBILE

The ABSCISSE JUBILE is a slim two-way floorstander from JMR Electroacoustique, the French company built around designer Jean-Marie Reynaud, and belongs to the Jubile series. JMR describes it as a complete redesign whose main goal was the most compact system possible that still installs with minimal placement constraints. The name comes from the mathematical term for the horizontal axis. The list price is EUR 6,650 per pair, in Pearly Anthracite Grey, Pearly White or Black Satin.

Key specs that matter

Response is quoted from 32 Hz to 28 kHz, nominal impedance is 4 ohm, and sensitivity is 89 dB per watt at 1 m with a 2.83 V input. JMR recommends amplifiers from 40 to 250 W. Each cabinet is 20 cm wide, 30 cm deep and 115 cm tall and weighs 30 kg. Two 14 cm woofer-midrange units share the lower band with an air motion tweeter of the aerostriction type, and the terminals accept single wiring, bi-wiring or passive bi-amplification.

Engineering and use context

JMR calls the layout a 2.5-way arrangement. One woofer is rolled off by a first-order filter of 6 dB per octave at 350 Hz, while the other runs up to a second-order handover of 12 dB per octave at 2,800 Hz to the tweeter. These drivers use a new carbon sandwich cone with liquid crystal fibre and a Gaussian profile, a 38 mm coil, a damped rubber and foam surround, a copper ring in the motor to flatten impedance, and linear excursion of plus or minus 5 mm. The tweeter sits under a machined aluminium roof coated with thin acoustic foam and is partly decoupled from the cabinet by a damping joint and viscoelastic compound. Woofers are fixed axially, which tensions the cabinet walls and spreads forces evenly between basket and baffle. The crossover lives in its own shielded cavity damped with bitumen, is wired by hand on anti-vibration plates, and uses silver-armature capacitors with HP1132 cable and parts matched to 1 percent. The 19 mm Medite enclosure has rounded front edges and a tuned triangular line exiting through a front vent, with viscoelastic compound instead of heavy foam on the walls. Spiked metal cones with a bitumen seal support the base. JMR suggests about 2 m between the speakers, only a slight toe-in, and at least 40 cm from side and rear walls.

Pairing

The low nominal load puts the emphasis on current delivery, so a transistor amplifier with a comfortable rating into low impedances is the logical choice. Two stereo amplifiers can drive the separate terminal pairs in passive bi-amp mode.

Alternatives

The JMR ORFEO JUBILE sits above it in the Jubile range, with two 180 mm drivers, 91 dB sensitivity and a 116 cm cabinet weighing 40 kg.