Small but mighty: JBL 104-BT review

A set of reference monitors for under £200 - and you don’t even need an interface? Just a laptop, some software, and a decent USB Mic? Ultimately, yes: meet JBL’s 104-BT monitors, which, to me at least, have been hiding in plain sight for some time.

My discovery of JBL’s 104-BT compact reference monitors happened quite by chance. A friend recently asked me how she could transform her small spare bedroom into a sequencing and recording space on a £500 budget.

A large desk and a full-size MIDI keyboard meant there wasn’t much room to move in the space, so the solution had to be compact but have the ability to deliver quality audio.

After recommending a quick switch from GarageBand to Logic on her Mac Book Pro for its huge library of sounds, loops, and collection of MIDI instruments, it didn’t leave much wiggle room for speakers, interface and mic - but then I remembered seeing a couple of boxes in a friend’s studio while I was building him a vocal booth. Small JBLs, if memory served - but I didn’t know much more than that, other than they were Bluetooth, which doesn’t normally scream ‘recording studio’.

Regardless, I got hold of a pair from him, and discovered that they were the 104-BT model - the BT standing for Bluetooth - and priced around £169-179, depending on who you shop with.

First Thoughts

Regardless of their somewhat diminutive stature and spec, this is a pair of speakers which are surprisingly impressive.

Technically, the 104-BTs are a compact option with a main speaker and an extension connected via a simple 2-core cable. The coaxial driver design comprises a 118mm woofer and a 19mm soft dome tweeter with a reflex port to the rear, all housed in a solid moulded oval enclosure. To all intents and purposes you could be thinking these are simply a desktop computer speaker set, and while they are just that, I soon discovered that they clearly outperform anything I’ve heard that falls into this category.

For their size, they produce a really impressive sound. Not overly loud, of course, but punchy and pushy, with plenty of detail and a reasonably smooth high end with no obvious colouration. While there’s a roll off around the 80Hz area, the porting kind of enhances the low-mids to give a decent impression of the bass you’re missing, which, given the small oval shape and size, is all the more pleasing rather than disappointing.

I did find that moving them around in front of me on my available desk space did produce a sweet spot, and for any future versions, it could be improved by possibly a base that allows you to tilt them up towards your ears. But luckily, I had a pair of small box speakers that raised the 104-BTs up to the perfect height.

Connect One, Connect All

Another really useful feature which I wasn’t expecting was the array of connectivity: besides a pair of phono inputs and a usual aux mini jack, there were also a pair of balanced TRS inputs to allow connection from an interface. Not forgetting, of course, the Bluetooth capability.

On the front is a clever selector which allows you to select any one of the inputs individually, but also a setting for receiving them all simultaneously - very handy if you want so switch between speakers using the wired TRS, for example, but then want to play ideas off your phone to others in the room via Bluetooth. I wish more devices were this versatile.

Using the balanced TRS inputs via my UAD Apollo was the obvious winner here, but not far behind was the Bluetooth interface, which proves there’s something to be said for keeping your audio in the digital domain. While I have other Bluetooth speakers, the JBL 104-BTs are now my go-to. It’s also lovely to have a chance to catch up on new music and some old favourites while I’m writing or just reading my emails. I don’t find these speakers in any way tiring on the ears.

Affordable and Versatile

If you’re looking for a way to get a little deeper into music, be it on the production side, as a singer-songwriter, or just simply for fun, you can’t really go wrong with the 104-BTs, especially if you’re on a tight budget and want to start with a much better monitoring option for your PC or Mac.

And on a personal note, I think every studio professional should have a point of reference that closely represents the type of equipment that is very likely to be used by the present day consumers of music; this is why Bluetooth devices such as headphones, earbuds, and these 104-BTs should never be fully dismissed in the referencing process.