What you are seeing are 4 Everests arranged in a WTMW array. The customer wanted the tall sound stage he was used to with his previous (vastly more expensive ) speakers, but wanted the JBL clarity and dynamics.
The array is actively multiamped; those are Bryston 28's in the background, and they are all controlled by DSP based crossover/eq/time-delay. Final tuning is done by ear on a variety of acoustic recordings, including personal recordings of the customer's piano.
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
That has to be one of the most extreme home audio rigs I've ever heard of...cool indeed. Just for perspective, how big is the screen in the middle? I've never seen the Everests in person, but I know what a 100" screen looks like. This may offer some perspective...
I suppose you professional folks get to see some outrageous stuff...
Brett
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. I have to believe the sound would be better with less amps and two less loudspeakers.
Widget
I'd have gone for a bigger screen instead . . .
". . . as you have no doubt noticed, no one told the 4345 that it can't work correctly so it does anyway."—Greg Timbers
The screen is about 6 foot across. There is a rug that is rolled up off-screen that goes on the floor, in case anyone was wondering about the granite.
We had them as a single pair originally. Quite nice, great attacks and decays (after dialing in to room of course) but the client missed the full height sound stage his previous speakers would do.
We are only using the woofers on the top units, not the horns. I was expecting it to be harder to blend in the second pair, but it turned out to have some real advantages. For one, we get active cancellation at two of the worst room modes. This means that the tonal balance we eq for STAYS no matter what the volume does: IE, no room load-up at 20-25hz, and much better control at 150hz- 250 hz. This is a huge thing for dynamics, specially micro-dynamics right after,say, a massive bass attack.
Subjectively, the array presents even greater ease and naturalness in music than the single pair with a very powerful, but quick, room pressurization. Aside from sound stage height, and sheer power, the subjective feeling that comes to one first is musical speed and pacing. Big band stuff positively swings. Female vocals and bass strings work together beautifully. PRAT folk would approve!
Multiple amps allows much more fine grained control on crossover, level balance and so on. He could easily have gone with 7BSST2 mono blocks, or even the 4BSST2 stereo amp since this is an easy load (what with one amp per section and all), but the client had 28BSST2 from a previous system that was a bear to drive. We are talking about a VERY fussy customer here.
After working with "audiophile" speakers that have horrid crossovers, nasty dispersion, and ringy tweeters, its a JOY to work with a properly designed speaker like the Everest. Makes my job a LOT easier.
Really an interesting project
The use of the second pair's woofers only to smooth out room response and get soundstage height (though I believe soundstaging cues tend to be derived more from the 700-10k region) is a very cool thing. Nice to play with such toys!
Full disclosure- I encouraged rippy to post these here, I thought the project would be an interesting one- particularly as it develops.
Impressive looking for sure.
Will everything be removed to finish the room? I wouldn't want to be finishing drywall, priming, and painting with all that gear in the way. If so, what's the final finish? How deep is the room?
Out.
Originally Posted by Rippy
What did you end up doing for the ceiling treatment?
And is this a two-channel home-theater setup, or am I missing something? NTTAWWT!
". . . as you have no doubt noticed, no one told the 4345 that it can't work correctly so it does anyway."—Greg Timbers
The ceiling has a absorber/diffuser in the soffit.
Badman, its more of the sound stage ambiance that is in the sub 300hz region. Image is indeed dependent on the higher frequencies.
It is, right now, a two channel system.
This was a very nice feature of the vertical dual woofer K2 systems as well as the M9500.The use of the second pair's woofers only to smooth out room response
This particular installation is proof positive that these drivers really should be available over the counter. There is something fundamentally wrong with having to go this particular route.Just because you can doesn't mean you should. I have to believe the sound would be better with less amps and two less loudspeakers.
Someone like Guido's carpenter could build a second set of low frequency enclosures to match the bottom pair of Everest II's without the need to double up on horns. The cost would be significantly reduced, but, obviously, cost doesn't seem to matter much here. For that matter, JBL's custom shop could probably have come up with a pair. Oh wait... they wouldn't have been able to source the second pair of drivers either.
Oh well, I guess we really are left with stacking our Everest II's on top of each other upsidedown. It's a hard knock life!
AwwwIt is, right now, a two channel system.
They really should stack another pair in the center behind a perf screen.
When this is completely finished, you should post a few more pics. I'm curious what the finished product will end up looking like. I bet it will be amazing looking.
Brett
Son of fun... 4313B.....Aaaannnd there lay the crux of the matter. We wanted to build JUST a woofer unit to go on top; the client has master cabinet makers working for him that could have done an exquisite job. But the woofer was no where to be found. Now, thanks to the likes of folk like Badman, I could have used woofers that were ALMOST as good which would have probably worked fine with more tinkering on the DSP but the client really wanted identical woofers. Can't blame him there. So, when a pair of used Everests showed up, he grabbed them quickly and here we are.
On that subject, anyone know where to find a replacement super tweeter for the K2? I have no idea why JBL chose not to have any spares built for repair purposes on their OWN flagship products but I have not been able to find a pair in the USA. At least, with our upside down Everest we have spare mid-range horns and super-tweeters!
Brett,He used to have surround sound, he didn't really care for it, nor the original 2channel system he had at the time (Wilson X2, Halcro monoblocks for the front, Wilson surround speakers for the rear). To show his disgust, he GAVE away the rear part of the system! The Halcro's are sitting in his garage, holding up his garden tools... I am not sure the client will EVER get around to finishing the room! It just does not seem to be a priority for him, its the music that matters to him. Since, however ugly, we have just enough absorption for proper behavior, he is not in a hurry to do the room treatments.
I dont think we can ever put this room in a home theater magazine....but here, in Mad Science lab, it goes nicely! Just a note, these speakers are in a basement where 3 out of 4 of the walls are concrete under the drywall. To get the speaker into the basement, we had to carry them across a large marsh (his back yard after the rains).
Regarding having six 1200 watt amplifiers being used on horns....we have no need for nearly that much power, of course, but the B28's are capable of very delicate work far surpassing that of the mega buck amps they replaced, so they stayed in the system. One point is that, except for live-volume Harley Davidson and coal train demonstrations, we are always running in the Class A portion of the amplifiers power range!
I agree.....the simpler .the better
Yeah, but by disconnecting the mid horn and tweeter from the top pair makes it seem far more reasonable. Years ago when I was prototyping the early version of Project May I did find the DSP controlled dual 1500AL woofers in an MTM configuration was pretty impressive.
Widget
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