JBL Stage 2 240H review

What the maker puts in writing

All five bullets, in full:

• “4.5-inch (114mm) Polycellulose Ribbed Cone Woofer”
• “Precision 2-Way Crossover”
• “Next Generation HDI Horn”
• “1-inch (25mm) Anodized Aluminum Tweeter”
• “Switchable Modes (Dolby Atmos or Surround/Height)”

No description. No power handling, no impedance, no frequency response, no mounting method.

The switch is the best thing on the list

Switchable modes (Dolby Atmos or Surround/Height).

Only one other product on this shelf has it: Klipsch’s RP-500SA, at $299.

It exists because the speaker does two different jobs:

Atmos mode — it sits on a tower, fires at the ceiling, and you hear the reflection. That path is longer and the ceiling absorbs and scatters treble, so the speaker needs more of it to arrive sounding neutral.

Surround mode — it fires at you from a wall, where the same boost would sound bright and hard.

The other eight products here have one setting and compromise — several while being sold for both uses.

The switch is also, read plainly, the clearest admission on this shelf that bouncing sound off a ceiling changes it. Which is exactly the argument SVS makes against the whole approach, in its own bullets on this same shelf.

The horn, and why a height module needs one

Next Generation HDI Horn.

A waveguide, doing the same job as Klipsch’s Tractrix: constraining where the tweeter’s output goes rather than letting it spread widely and unevenly.

Which matters here more than on an ordinary speaker, because a height module’s entire function is to illuminate one patch of ceiling — the one that reflects toward the sofa. Treble sprayed into the side walls and the curtains is treble lost.

Three approaches on this shelf: Klipsch publishes a horn and its coverage angle (90° × 90°); JBL names a horn without an angle; ELAC uses a concentric driver so the tweeter and woofer share one source point; Sony has none of the three.

Four and a half inches

The largest woofer among the small modules here.

Cone area goes as the square of the radius, so 4.5 inches has about 27 percent more surface than the 4-inch drivers in Klipsch’s R-41SA, Polk’s XT90 and ELAC’s A4.2 — and about 30 percent more than Sony’s 3.94-inch full-range unit.

More area means more air moved at the same excursion: lower reach before the driver gives out, less distortion at a given level.

The SVS Prime Elevation uses the same 4.5 inches at $649. Two products step up to 5.25 inches — Klipsch’s RP-500SA at $299 and Polk’s ES90 at $449 — for about 72 percent more area than a 4-inch.

What three hundred and thirty dollars does not buy you

No power handling. Klipsch publishes “50 watts continuous and 100 watts peak” at $199, and 75 W at $299.

No impedance. Klipsch states 8 ohm; Polk states compatibility with 4 and 8 ohm receivers. On a passive speaker that is the number that tells you whether your receiver can drive it safely.

No minimum receiver channel count. Only Polk publishes it, and it is the fact most likely to stop you using a height pair at all: it needs two amplifier channels beyond your existing five, so a 5.1 receiver has nowhere to connect it.

No mounting method, where Klipsch publishes a keyhole and warns against using it on a ceiling, and SVS ships a multi-angle bracket rated for overhead use.

3,500 g and 175 × 269 × 180 mm are published, and both look right for a cabinet of this class.