JBL Control 1 summertime project surround array and more!

[JBL 4645]

Hears what I have been up to these past weeks.

It all started well I guess since my first trip to the Empire Leicester Square cinema 17 years ago, the site sound and presentation exceed my expectations to a new level, the cinema was billed as the best and one of the largest THX screens in the United Kingdom between 1989 and 1998.

Employing a fully 100% JBL sound system consisting of

JBL five-screen 4675-A x20 15” mid bass drivers

JBL five-screen 2360-A HF horns

JBL x8 4645 sub bass units

JBL x22 surrounds

JBL x15 6290 amplifies

Dolby CP-200

Dolby SR/A

THX 3417 crossover/monitor

Laser show was also included in the presentation that show cased the cinema as an Event, and it was clearly that, with sound that went beyond most home cinemas at that time and further.

After seeing the movie event of the year Indiana Jones and Last Crusade presented in six-track Dolby Stereo with split-surrounds and Lucasfilm THX sound system, every single low end sound was felt along with pin point directivity, from the front row to the sweet spot in the auditorium without a single loss in quality.

The amount of bitching I have heard over the years is rather incredible, those who keep claming there home cinema is better than the cinema, well a professional THX sound system cinema is a hard act to knock, and most home cinema owners are running miss matched loudspeakers placed at the front, not to mention poor placement.

Surrounds in the Empire play a huge and paramount role in the presentation; they really do reach the listener eras with clarity, so far the experiment, this project as met my expectations and is far from being complete, but for the meantime its doing wonders!

The total JBL complement at the moment is as follows

JBL Control 5’s x5 three-screen presently active, this September I will increase this to five-screen.

JBL Control 1’s x8 two on each sidewall at the present moment, with a further two to installed, taken the total to four per sidewall.

The centre back surround is comprised of four JBL control 1’s two of these are used for the centre back surround, note: the picture that I have placed hare, note the bottom part of the diagram shows the back half of the split-surrounds. The middle one shows which ones are running the centre back surrounds.

All the formatting for these channels is done manually; this only takes me a few seconds to perform.

JBL MR centre x1 upper centre channel this works by taking the central phantom signal from the mains left and right, this can only be achieved via using the RCA pre-outputs and sending them to a separate Dolby Pro-Logic from the Dolby Digital decoder, its all in the mix friends and it works!

JBL 4645 x1 Sub Bass Professional THX approved this as to be the highlight of the home cinema, but I’m sure the JBL control 1’s will be focused on more these next few weeks.

JBL HT-1F x1 inactive at the moment, awaiting final placement for this wonderful JBL loudspeaker!

[JBL 4645]

Hear is a image showing the left split-surround, r the side surround in a Dolby surround-EX centre back surround mode, where the central phantom signal is removed from the split-surrounds left and rights, this as you know gives a more open and more realistic surround sound.

[JBL 4645]

Hear is a image showing the Right split-surround, r the side surround in a Dolby surround-EX centre back surround mode, where the central phantom signal is removed from the split-surrounds left and rights, this as you know gives a more
open and more realistic surround sound.

[JBL 4645]

This wider angle shot taken as far back the home cinema as possible, shows the placement of the JBL control 1’s placed on the right side and the back wall.

[JBL 4645]

This wider angle shot taken as far back the home cinema as possible, shows the placement of the JBL control 1’s placed on the left side and the back wall.

[northwood]

we need more pics of ur theater

[JBL 4645]

After delaying re-soldering a possible dry-joint on the (Technics SH-8058) and so, early this morning with the soldering iron nearby me ready to attack a little probable dry joint on one of the input terminals. I unscrewed all the side screws and screws that supported the PCB (printed circuit board) flipped the PCB over and looked it over with a magnifying glass, looking for hairline fractures moving the circuit pin connector with my finger to see it moved.

Well there was one pin that I was a little uncertain about so I decided to go ahead and warm up the soldering iron and fix the elusive humming problem that it was inducing.

It turned out to be a lucky success after I put the unit back together that’s all. I then used it for a screen bass left and right enchantment that outputs from the DCX2496 LF as well as working as monitor to see what’s happening at the bass screen channel low end.

The EQ is very broad in terms of full frequency spectrum, but seeing I have the screen bass on left centre and right channel’s set at 50Hz to 499Hz with a mixture of (Linkwitz-Riley and Besselworth) and where’s the (Technics SH-8058) barograph display function is from (63Hz 160Hz 400Hz 1KHz 2.5KHz 6.3KHz 16KHz) it’s a not a bad little EQ, soon to be replaced with matching 1/3 octave EQ.

[JBL 4645]

Well it finally turned up this morning, very pleased. I’ll do a thorough check out later in the day in the mean time I’m popping off to Winton high street.

[JBL 4645]

Bugger me I forgot the Phantom Menace Power supply unit to power the ECM8000 bugger!

So I’ve just ordered though “digital village” uk a (Behringer TUBE ULTRAGAIN MIC100) should be with me on Friday.

£30.00 pounds.

Digital Village has one of the most relaxed calm custom services I’ve come across, nice friendly all round fast service.

[JBL 4645]

Well it finely turned up and after reading though the pdf manual this morning to get a basic understanding of the MIC100. After switched on MIC100 and giving a few minutes to warm plugged in the ECM8000 and attached the other XLR lead to the MIC100 and plugged it into the Technics SH-8055 I soon noticed I had to reduce the noise floor.










Once done I played some pink noise and monitored the centre channel first off. The response was pick up was far better than my other microphone after making a few adjustments to the left and right I resumed “Dragnet” (1987) that was playing last night but I got a little restless.





The MIC100 is relatively easy to operate once you get used to its functions.

I’ll go a little further later this afternoon or early evening when things quieten down a little bit, I have the sub bass extension to look at and LFE.1 and surround arrays as well.

[JBL 4645]

Went walkabout this morning first to make an appointment with my doctor, as I have a middle right ear inner problem kinder like a cold. So I’ll wait until Monday for that. After which I walked over to Boscombe to have look around brought some affordable loudspeaker cable from (Richer Sounds) for the surrounds, and while looking in (Eddie Moors Music) store I saw hiding away behind in the cabinet a (Behringer FBQ2496) for £109.00.

I’ll see if I can get the FBQ2496 powered for sometime tonight using a little improvisation, I need a few XLR plugs so I might have to wait until the morning to a few and some cable, but in the meantime I think I can use some spit and gum to do the trick temporally of course.



So this is how the unit appears for now, nothing is powered up as of yet, I’ll get around to that in a jiffy. I’ll be using the unit for LFE.1 and sub bass extension, I’ve heard some good reviews of the unit working in the home cinema community for about a year now, so I’ll look some details up see what everyone else has done with it and apply some of those techniques to the programming of the FBQ2496.

[JBL 4645]

Well I Googled the name FBQ2496 added forums and found this to be helpfully interesting. So far I’ve taken onboard some of the details and it’s seems to be quite indispensable.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/bfd-forum/35-bfd-guide-quick-links-faq-tips.html

http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/bfdguide/

[Audiobeer]

WTF

P.S. The pic of the Young Lady is absolutely Beautiful Northwood.

[grumpy]

an example comparison of Earthworks S30 (M30) and a Behringer ECM8000
(only one example of each, but I thought someone might find this interesting).
Ignore the small variations... getting -exact- mic placement
vs the test source is tough. Levels have been normalized. If you assume the
S30 is flat in this bandwidth, then the ECM8000 response is what the plot
represents (deviation from flatness).

-grumpy

[JBL 4645]

grumpy

Not sure if I follow you but I do catch on. Are you say the mix is a bit high end on the high frequency response? And that it needs to be calibrated for an even more flatter frequency response.

So far I’ve gotten a bit of usage out of it the MIC100 is a little tricky I can see the level of noise being added on the RTA and keeping a nibble finger on the knobs so that it won’t distract me too much. After which I can do a pink noise check it’s a slight improvement over the other microphone that I’ve been using for the past 6 years.

I’ve done some crazy analyzing with it to check up close and personally on the JBL Control 1 and 5, a better RTA like the DEQ2496 would be good asset in the near future a few as I’d like one for left and right stereo front stereo surrounds centre and centre back and sub bass.