Reviews JBL 5.1 Channel SCS145.5 Surround Cinema Speaker System

From the Manufacturer

JBL SCS145.5 -- Exciting Home Theater Performance at an Affordable Price

The Sound That Professionals Have Chosen for More than 60 Years
Have you been to a movie or gone to a concert recently? There’s a good chance that you were enjoying the show on JBL loudspeakers. For more than 60 years, JBL has been the loudspeaker brand of choice for recording and theatrical professionals around the world. JBL engineering, power, clarity and technical accuracy are legendary, and today’s high-resolution digital media demands nothing less than loudspeakers that can handle their sonic range. So why not enjoy your movies or music on loudspeakers from the company that likely helped to mix and master them? With JBL speakers, you can enjoy the thrill of the show or the excitement of a live concert--all right in your own home.

The JBL SCS145.5 speaker system delivers blockbuster
performance in a small package
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Blockbuster Performance in a Small Package

JBL engineers have designed the Surround Cinema Speaker systems to deliver JBL’s famous high-performance audio at a price anyone can afford. Despite its small size, the incredibly affordable SCS145.5 delivers a sound experience equal to systems much larger and much more expensive. What's more, it's presented in an elegant design that will look at home in any listening environment. In their sleek, attractive enclosure, the SCS145.5’s small, black satellite speakers disappear into a room, making them perfect for small spaces where big sound is important. And when it comes to installation flexibility, the SCS145.5 is a great value. Unlike other speaker systems at its price, the SCS145.5 includes wall-mount brackets. Optional aluminum floor stands that hide all of the wires are also available (sold separately).

Advanced Speaker Design for Precise Sound

Great sound starts with incredible clarity and a rich, natural midrange. Despite the SCS145.5’s small size and price, its satellites easily reach this high standard. Created in the same state-of-the-art facilities where JBL’s engineers design the company’s widely renowned (and far more expensive) premium high-end speakers, the SCS145.5 satellites will amaze you with their performance.

Titanium is both extremely rigid
and light weight for crystal clear sound

Titanium Tweeters Deliver Crystal Clear Sound
Half-inch titanium-laminate tweeters re-create all of the high frequencies you hear in your favorite movie or song. Titanium’s strength and light weight make it perfect for quickly and accurately reproducing high frequencies from music and movies without strain or distortion. Each tweeter sits in a patented EOS waveguide. The waveguide ensures that the SCS145.5 disperses high frequencies widely and uniformly. Simply put, the SCS145.5 satellites spread smooth, high-frequency sound over a large listening area.

The woofer does not bend or
flex, providing distortion-free sound

Lightweight Midrange Woofers Deliver Rich Vocals
The SCS145.5’s rigid, 3" midrange drivers are both strong and lightweight. The cone is so strong that it does not allow the unwanted bending or flexing that causes harmful distortion. Being lightweight, it can easily stop and start as the audio signal from your music or movie does. The result is rich, precise sound from any medium or source. Unlike many other speaker systems at its price, the SCS145.5 benefits from the extra attention that JBL’s engineers have been paid to the critical center channel, which delivers dialogue and other vocals. They have built it with a dual-woofer design so that voices sound especially rich and clear

8" Powered Subwoofer Delivers Deep Bass
Good bass is critical to a great-sounding home theater and is especially important when you are talking about a subwoofer-satellite speaker package. A well-designed subwoofer should complement the satellites, making them sound much larger than they are while adding deep, low bass reinforcement. The SCS145.5’s eight-inch subwoofer has both strength and light weight, so it reproduces bass effortlessly and with maximum impact. Its 100-watt on-board amplifier delivers all the power that a subwoofer needs to get things really moving, while the level control allows you to customize the subwoofer’s performance to your taste. And since it uses a small enclosure, this subwoofer can fit easily into nearly any room.

The included wall brackets make
perfect speaker placement easy

Quick and Easy Installation

Whether you’re doing it yourself or a professional is doing it for you, the SCS145.5 is easy to set up and wire. High-quality connections on the back of each speaker allow you to use high-performance speaker wire, while the powered subwoofer uses a line-level LFE (low-frequency effects) connection that attaches easily to today’s 5.1- and 7.1-channel surround-sound receivers. The LFE input even has an “audio sense” circuit to turn itself off automatically when you’re not using it. The included wall brackets allow full horizontal rotation, so you can precisely lock in the best speaker placement.

What's in the Box
Four SCS145.5 satellite speakers, one SCS145.5 center channel speaker, one SCS145.5 subwoofer, brackets for all five speakers, and speaker wire