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

Vintage Dolby Stereo CP200 with minor repairs and modifications with online assistant from Dolby labs.
Illuminated Cat-109 meter cards maybe first time I've seen one done as seen many CP200 at other cinema sites in the UK in the past.

All of the meters was replaced with new ones. These meters maybe of a new type but still same to something around the 1970's maybe a bit earlier as these meters I have found to same in one my two CB radios Super Star 360FM, so CB radio saved the day once I ordered them.

 
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First testing of the new Dolby meters without the lights yet being wired up and meters performed to Dolby reference level nicely.

 
Yes!!! Killer!!! Love it!!!

Question: you have heavily treated your walls... did you deaden it so much using measurements or your ear? Just curious.

Really cool looking space @JBLhomeCinema. Glad you shared, look forward to seeing you on the forum!
 
Todd. I used a bit of my ears while making sounds with my mouth like "hissing sounds" against the bare wall then I slip the tile in place and Bam! There goes the harshness on the walls. I decided to do the whole room and nope its not a problem. I still have a few areas to finish off and fix some on maybe some more cardboard with some Velcro attached to the back so I can attach it to front right corrner of the screen, as the screen is a bit of problem to take down if I had to and the tiles need to be easily removable as the screen is in really tight and not easy to move around the small room.

I was skeptical of the use of the tiles at first and brought a pack box one at time and as it slowly went together the sound of the room certainly would have only few tiny db quieted down, had I think to maybe pop a balloon and check with REW to see what the decay time is but no can do now. The room is quiet at night with a maybe less than 30dbA often drops to Lo on the meter but can still see a 30dbC so that would mean there is something producing that Not here maybe another flat or being picked up from outside maybe air wind blowing around and it gets to the loft and well maybe picked up on the meter. TureRTA be better to look at as to what frequency but it doesn't impact on listening to a film or music.

There will be some reflections still in the room be it from the projection-screen or tv screen or equipment rack or any surface that is reflective?But the room is deadened down enough.
 
Amazing! I'm with JStewart, I have no idea what all that is. Maybe I missed it, but how long did it take you to accumulate all of that equipment and connect it all? Also, what is your background that allows you to build such a masterpiece?

Jack
 
Wow...I can't imagine putting all that into that size of a room, and I can't imagine how great it sounds! What are your room's dimensions?

Curious of the cats will stay in the room with you when things are fired up? Our cat used to sit in the theater with us. For whatever reason he doesn't anymore. He's gotten old and grumpy. We've taken to calling him Matthau instead of his actual name, because he's such a grumpy old man.
 
This theater is awesome! It definitely looks like a cinema experimental lab with all that cool gear. I bet you can reach some pretty amazing un-distorted SPL with the close listening proximity.
 
This theater is awesome! It definitely looks like a cinema experimental lab with all that cool gear. I bet you can reach some pretty amazing un-distorted SPL with the close listening proximity.
"She'll make point five past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself."
 
WOW! Where did you ever get the pro processor, and cards...must have set you back a bunch of cash!
 

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