JBL THX home cinema room (with cats)

A room with a lot of JBL!!!

Description

JBL control 12SR fitted with JBL 2206 bass drivers for more handling power and slightly better over the JBL G-125. JBL 2371 HF horns. What you see is a five screen or 70mm Todd-AO SDDS 8. It uses two Dolby SDU4 decoders wired to the main AVR LCR and when the decoders are activated a nice spread of sound from dialogue panning smoothly moves across or may appear on one of the five channels. Sound effects smoothly move over the fronts and music sounds far wider. This not to be confused with front-wide.

x117 JBL speakers and 20kw THX sound system.

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(Star Trek II R2 DVD)

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120" acoustically transparent fixed screen with Viewsonic 727 4k DLP pixel shift projector (Top Gun R1 DVD)

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There is still plenty of room for more JBL
JBL 8330 mkII that came from Twickenham film studios dubbing theatre in good condition. Sidewall arrays, rear wall and centre middle back.
JBL control 5 on the ceiling x6 Height 1 Height 2 Height 3
Room is treated throughout and still some more tiles to be fitted.
Irwin rocker seats x6
Video projection port window at back of the room to isolate projector fan noise even when its on silent I can't really hear it just the movie soundtrack.

Note: behind laying against the wall a simple bit of cardboard with acoustical tiles glued to it so I can place above the AVR to keep some of the sound from going into the corner works fairly well.
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Main systems AVR and cinema processors
Denon AVC-X8500H Dolby Atmos, auro3D, dtsX
Dolby Stereo CP200 with NR, A and SR cards one of the best cinema processors made and still in use at selected 70mm cinemas today. I have the Dolby CP200 Accessory Unit as well and Dolby MPU1 with Dolby SRA5 Spectral Recording x8
Dolby CP500 and Sony SDDS DFP-D3000 the best SDDS processor as it has two AUX inputs and few other features as well.
Dolby CP45 decoders used for pre-amp and extra matrix channels
Dolby SDU4 for the five screen decoding
Dolby CP65
Dolby CP55
Dolby SA10 EX
Dolby EX DU4
Dolby PS1B x3
dts CAD-5

All players are placed on the other rack DVD HD-DVD bluray and UHD 4k

Behringer DCX2496 x3 for the five screen channels and subs

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The Dolby Stereo CP200 the finest 70mm cinema processor made. Selected cinemas still use these today as regular 70mm is still a huge interest to fans. Dolby PS1B power supply needed new DC capacitors fitted and some smaller capacitors from recommendations by Dolby labs to make the processor great again. The CP200 was released around March 1980 so its nearly 40 years old.

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Two other rack towers house the 20kw of amplifiers. Other rack is going to be for the Laserdisc players or maybe the other player as I can hear the spindle motors when the room is quiet at 30dbA or less.

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Lucasfilm Ltd THX Sound System, crossover/monitor 3417 with all the THX cinema crossover cards intact

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BELOW SURROUND or Underneath Surround underneath the Irwin rocker seats is a matrix decoding of one or many of the sidewall surrounds. Basically it takes the sound of some panned off screen or onscreen sounds that often where you see a visual object moving at a downward angle offscreen often sounding on the sidewall surround arrays visually doesn't match the angle. Now that I had been using this for some years now and the idea first came to mind around 1998. There's up to x12 JBL control 1, for the Below Surround to be fitted in.

Bass seat shakers x6

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My cat Magic laying on the floor in front of my Dolby Stereo CP200 ready for soon install but had to have some few soldering modification/minor repairs done before installing.

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My first cat Sooty prowling around the home.

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Behringer ECM8000 for checking speakers frequency response ether up close to the speakers or multiplexing the microphones around the room with a multi channel audio mixer with lots of inputs Berhinger RX1202 or sometimes often use a smaller Behringer XENYX1202.

Comments

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1917 (2019)
Dolby AtmosPlusIIIx / 156 JBL speakers / Lucasfilm Ltd THX Sound System, 21kw

Overhead surround is used sparingly chapter 5, 20:12 I have the Dolby AtmosPlusIIIx tuned through rehearsal listening to other channels otherwise most Atmos home cinemas I would bet would have a some audio masking difficulties and certain sounds may go unheard/unnoticed.

Bass and LFE.1 is deep and reverberate to create a tense feeling of walking around the ruins of houses and muddy waters.
Cinematography looks good clear and nicely camera focused with some nice camera crane shots and steadicam.
Update on the Dolby Atmos. Don't expect a lot of usage on the Heights 1 2 and 3 the biplane scene at chapter 5, 20:12 is about as much as you would hear. A few little derbies on Height 1 during the last battle scene that only lasts for few seconds. How did this win best sound?? No use of serious 100% directional dialogue panning. I think academy ampas members must be all hard of hearing when it comes to nomination voting.
 
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Superman the movie (1978) UHD-4k US version
Theatrical cut 143min with new Dolby mix Dolby Atmos

Dolby AtmosPlusIIIx 26 channels / 156 JBL speakers 21kw Lucasfilm Ltd THX Sound System

Picture looks fine nice and grainy colours look fine aspect ratio looks fine.
Dolby Atmos overhead surrounds are active once the movie starts into the opening credits though to the end credits.

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There appears to be some sound effects differences between the 2000 remix release, that most fans including myself that wasn't all pleased with. This put a smile on my face from start to end.

I still have the letterbox Laserdisc edition that is a good Dolby Stereo source for compassion that I'm still listening too.
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Dolby Stereo Surround on 70mm
 
THX D1138 booth/monitor
Had this for 7 years and only tested 7 years ago in working order but never fully installed it. THX D1138 sell incredible cheap on ebay now as low as 25.00 pounds I seen some. Reason is the remote software windows98 windowsXP

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Underneath cover is a complex set of PCB boards for an early day DSP crossover management booth monitor, that weighs a bit and its size as well compared to smaller lightweight DSP crossover management systems now.

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This version would have been sent to 35mm THX cinema as it doesn't include the extra daughter-board for 5 screen 70mm/SDDS. The crossover for the screen channels is a 3-way or can be adjusted to 2-way.

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The monitor speakers inside are fairly good sounding that includes an audio limiter that can be adjusted so it won't damage the small monitor speakers.

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Taken down the other JBL five screen to install new JBL five screen.
JBL 46 series cab boxes used with JBL 4671 cinema use or a JBL 4671OK for home.
JBL 2226 15"
JBL 2371 HF horns


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I forgot to take final picture with all the HF horns fitted up with some wedge foam tiles glued to cardboard and fitted around the HF horns to keep the sound from passing behind the speakers at the front of the wall.

The screen fitted back up and took 19hrs non-stop.

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Improved the SW/LFE.1 output range from +10dB with max +55dB if I wanted to use the extra gain.
Die Hard 2 region 2 DVD first pressing release LFE.1 chapter 16, 1:hr11.min17sec plane landing with more than enough low frequency effects that rumbles deeply for Dolby Stereo 70mm 1990.
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Cool gear but I think you should consult a professional on a couple of details... At first sight I can see a couple of glaring problems:
1) Using hissing sounds to determine the need for acoustic treatment. It's a big no-no to treat only high frequency and leave the bottom end untouched. Your horns probably give you a get out of jail free card on that hopefully.
2) The new cabs for the mains leave a huge gap between the midbass and the horn. The cabs sould be turned upside down so that the horn is as close to the bass as possible to avoid the haircomb effect at the crossover point. The maximum distance should be less than half the wavelength at XO point...
 

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