The cabinet immediately strikes you as a woman's body. SO I think they are very well designed for the visual sense as well. Curvy and becoming to the eye. Before I entered the professional side of the audio business, I worked over 10 years in retail audio and commercial sound reinforcement. I have heard more sets of speakers than is practical to count and I have heard all types of varying quality. From esoteric vinyl and vacuum tube based boutique systems costing over $100,000.00 to a $99.00 25-watt Sanyo plastic molded shelf system. From concert halls to rehearsal rooms to recording studios and mastering suits. I have been around the audio block and the 661's presented surprisingly wide and accurate sound.

Jaton asked me if I would consider taking the speakers to one of our studios and give them an audition. The timing was right as the Sony recording artist band known as I/O was coming to our studio to track their new album. Using home speakers for critical listening in a studio is rarely done as home audio is usually designed to have some desired character and studio monitors are designed not have character and to be very flat in their frequency response; to maintain accurate sound reproduction of what is being performed/recorded. A studio engineer listens in the room with the instruments and then goes to the microphone locker to choose a few microphones to capture the sound for the given SPL (sound pressure level) tone of the musicians instrument and/or amplifier/speaker cabinet. Having an accurate monitor is very important to critical listening...so if the sound going into the microphone sounds like the sound coming out of the speakers...you hae slected the correct microphone and placement for that particular session. The Jatons where very accurate and detailed as I could here the differences between various microphone placements and this helped me dial-in the sound quickly.

The rear port is not a weakness so-to-speak. However, with a rear port the placement of the speakers is critical to achieve the best performance; in both sound stage and bass response. Therefore, the listener would benefit by spending some time positioning the speakers at the ideal distance from the rear and side walls. Once they are in the best position in relationship to the walls (and other structures in your listening room) you will know it right away. The sound will be much bigger and the sound stage will present equally from both speakers to the listing position. As a starting place I apply the "Inverse Square" rule, which is to place the speakers on equal plans facing strait ahead and listen at a distance twice as far away from the speakers as they are from each other.

The power handling is modest so be aware that these speakers were designed for lower power amplifiers. A large amp can push the speakers out of their baskets...because these speakers sound so good even when pushed passed their rated limit, you might not realize it until it is too late. Therefore, I recommend taking off the grills so you can see the drivers when listening at very high levels.

The Jaton 661 HD's were auditioned and exercised in three different listening environments with midrange home hi-fi gear and professional recording and mastering equipment as well. The three listening rooms were the living room in my home, a professional recording studio main control room and in Jaton’s showroom. The first time listening to the 661's was in Jaton showroom in Milpitas, California.

After seeing their monument in front of their building and being unable to prevent myself from investigation this new manufacturer I was unaware of, I stopped in and Paul working the front desk and shortly after, George introduced his self and invited me in to answer my question of "What do you guy do here"? Jaton building is the US operations center complete with business offices, R&D, manufacturing, component assembly, warehousing and shipping. During our brief chat George and Paul learned that I am a professional musician as well as a founder of Vibe Media Group. When George learned that Vibe Media Group owns and operates commercial recording studios he asked me to have a listen to Jaton's newest product; The Lyra 661,s stereo speakers.

In the conference room were a set of 661's connected to a Rotel CD player and a Rotel integrated amplifier. I sat down on a small couch and George put in the latest Nora Jones CD. The first statement these speakers made to me was that they were not making any statements of their own. I thought I was familiar with this recording. Well was I wrong. The HD in the 661's part number must stand for "High Definition". The detail and extended high frequency response was effortless and revealing. Every single instrument seemed to have its own acoustic properties left in totally in tact. IT was evident that I was listing to a serious speaker system. Being a bass player for 25 years makes me a tough judge of accurate yet not boomy bass reproduction. The 661's made the double bass sound glorious and rich. The growl and swelling development of finger plucked whole notes bloomed like giant flowers in front of me and then disappeared without lingering around the room or in the speakers rear ported cabinet. These two reasons were why I started asking many questions about these gems.

I felt it would be interesting to bring the 661's into a real session and let some musicians, trained recording engineers and credited producer give their feedback. Between my partners and me, we have over 25 pairs of speakers. Mostly control room monitors and hi-end home audio. In our control room, A we positioned the 661's just behind the recoding console where the near filed monitors usually are. I brought from home my modified Adcom GFA-1A power amp and would use the Carver and A/B Systems control room amplifiers. My partner Giotto Harrison recently finished recording and mastering an acoustic jazz ensemble called Tangaria. Since we both heard this recording a billion times, this was a good place to start. As soon as the first note was played, a open and present soundstage developed in front of us. The sound of the instruments were both accurate but also had a pleasing feeling. I say feeling, because I know we just do not hear in our ear canal. We also feel sound waves when they physically come in contact with our bodies. The blending of feeling and hearing by the human brain is called the Psychoacoustics. Psycho acoustically speaking, the Jaton 661 's made us feel the music not just hear it... specially the tenor sax. "Wow that sounds great" was the first thing I said. Giotto felt that the 661 had a bit of midrange presence that he did not remember engineering into the recording.

After the Tangaria CD the band started to arrive and my favorite part of the recording process was about to begin... Getting tones from the musicians and their instruments both amplified and acoustic. Drums always go first. So after the band settled in and the drum were finished acclimating to the temperature and humidity in our room, we started listening to the kit and walking around the room to make microphone and microphone placement decisions. The Jaton's handled the dynamic range of the rock players kit with ease. We detected no strain in the sound even when the drivers where moving quite a bit. The drums sounded very close to the sound we heard in the tracking room. Then drummer asked us what speakers we were monitoring on, and we pointed at the Jaton's. He liked the sound of the kick drum very much. This is a testament to the 661's proprietary speaker material and cabinet design. So far, these beautiful looking speakers made a drummer and bass player smile. However, we did not want to over drive the speakers as this client and their producer monitors audio very loudly. So, we switched back to our Tannoy 15 dual concentric studio monitors, which handle allot more power.

Next, I brought the 661's and some nice Jaton stands to my home for a listen of my favorite recording. Some recordings used I recorded myself and completely familiar with from hearing them in multiple environments and played back on multiple systems. My living room was fairly empty as I recently moved into this house, other than the couch, love seat, my bass amplifier and a chair... the 14 wide x 20 deep x 12 high room was open and more reflective than the average furnished living room. I chose an area in the middle of the room where I could position the 661's about 18" away from the back wall (to let the rear port breath and develop properly) and still have no side wall closer than four feet.

I decided to listen to the 661's using my Monster Cable interconnects and a Sony Elite series CD player as well as an Adcom CD player with 176,4 KHz sampling converters. First, I connected the Sony directly to the Adcom GFA-1A, which has upgraded output devices and generates a healthy 250 WPC @ 8 ohms. No pre-amp was used as I used the volume out put of the CD player as gain control. I selected a Yellow Jackets recording called The SPIN. The Yellow Jackets are contemporary electric jazz band with superlative musicians playing the best instruments on the market. This particular version of the song was an ADD recording. The sound stage was wide and the high frequency response was so wonderful. You could hear cymbal crashes last for a very long time in their decay and not be colored by newly developing and louder sounds. I have to say again, these speakers allow each individual sound to be what is. The ability for a speaker to put a band in front of you is rare and if you close your eyes, you can imagine the stage position of the players easily in your mind.

The Jaton 661's are a great value for the money. I do not know of speaker with a more pleasing look, better sound stage and detailed clarity for the price of these Jaton's. These speakers must be considered when shopping for high definition music reproduction speakers

UPDATE - Nov-2006 The Lyra 661's have been improved in their third version the DX with a better crossover network and bi-wire connections for bi-amping!

Customer Service

Jaton was very responsive to my inquiries and welcomed me to their showroom, testing lab and US distribution center.

Similar Products Used:

The Jatons were compared with speakers of simular size from Tannoy, JBL, Warfdale, Mission, EV, JVC, PMC and Dynaudio.