One of music’s greatest abilities is to move its listeners. Usually that’s an emotional experience, but listening to the JBL Summit Everest speakers, I quickly remembered it can be physical too.
The first time I felt bass vibrate my very soul was sat in the back of my friend’s Vauxhall Nova, with its back full of subwoofers. Then there was my 20s, when I spent a considerable amount of time standing too close to speakers in what we’ll call my “dubstep era”.
Thankfully, being sat in front of the JBL Summit Everest was quite the upgrade to both of those experiences — but just as palpable.
For many people, JBL might be a brand they would more associate with the best Bluetooth speakers more than hi-fi, but the company’s history is firmly rooted in high-end home audio, and celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. The launch of these speakers, and the slightly smaller Summit K2, is part of those celebrations.
They are actually the fifth generation of Project Everest speakers that span more than 40 years, with this iteration slotting into the company’s now five-strong Summit Series.
JBL says this range represents the most “technically accomplished” speakers it has ever made for homes, and the new Everest sit at the top of all of them, having taken six years to make. I’m told the engineers were given no budget to hit, and no specific selling point to nail, except to make the very best speakers they could.
The homes these speakers are made for, though, must have space I can only dream of. As their name might suggest, the Summit Everest are enormous. Standing at 144cm, they’re a little shy of 5 feet tall, and take up the floor space of at least two ‘regular-sized’ floorstanders, maybe more.
You’ll want to think where you’re putting them too, because moving them around isn’t exactly an easy option at 237kg per speaker.
For anyone familiar with the Everest range, they’ll look familiar — they’ve very much kept the family DNA, and are certainly not for people worried about whether a speaker blends in or not, even with their curved cabinet design and choice of gloss finishes.
These are proud statement speakers, with proprietary dual 10-inch mid-bass drivers and dual 15-inch woofers that sit below a custom, large-format Sonoglass horn.
Within this horn is the newly engineered mid/high frequency system — comprising three two-inch dual-diaphragm, dual-motor compression drivers — which promises next-level clarity, detail and dynamic precision.
Considering what these speakers are capable of, there’s a range of options for powering them, with the option for single wire, alongside more likely bi-amp/bi-wire and tri-amp/tri-wire configurations.
With a minimum impedance of 2.7 Ohms, your amp(s) of choice are going to need to be suitably powered too — the demo used Mark Levinson 600 Series electronics, made up of the preamp and dual monoblock amplifiers totalling around $110,000 /£100,000.
I sat through a demo of six songs, the first being a new hi-fi show favorite when there is bass to show off: the Geoff Castellucci cover of The Sound of Silence. But despite having heard it numerous times over the two days of the High End Vienna show, I’ve never quite heard it sound like it did on the Summit Everest.
The pure power, depth and definition with which Castellucci’s voice was reproduced were near visceral, extending all the way down into the sub bass at a volume that effortlessly filled JBL’s considerably sized listening room, without any distortion. I think I can still feel the sub-harmonics rumbling in my chest today.
JBL turned to another show favorite, Pink Panther by markusphilippe, to show off the incredible spatial separation that these speakers are capable of. It also highlighted a seriously natural handling of both the saxophone and double bass melodies, two instruments that are notoriously tricky for speakers to reproduce with conviction.
Intimate female vocals were served up by a play through of With Birds by Dominique Fils-Aimé and Diana Krall’s The Girl in the Other Room, also helping the Summit Everest demonstrate the depth and accuracy of their soundstage.
The “fun” came in the form of The Future is Unknown by Adriatique — a melodic, energetic techno track that shows off the Everest’s grippy handle on dynamics, a hypnotic, pulsing bassline delivered with so much power it feels like it might rumble me right out of my seat, and powerful synths so full of texture they sound almost three dimensional.
Of course, there’s the small matter of the price, and — fairly predictably — none of this comes cheap. The Summit Everest cost an eye-watering $160,000 / £140,000 per pair, meaning this level of hi-fi is not something that most of us will experience outside of demo rooms.
But that’s ok. There is plenty of great gear out there for a much more realistic budget, but it’s still nice to be reminded of what’s possible when that budget is left at the bottom of the mountain. A real treat indeed.
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