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The CRS8 HF section has an 800W peak power input, enabling a 1:16 dynamic range with up to 90% less distortion from 1kHz. to beyond 20kHz.

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What does "1:16 dynamic range" mean?
 

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Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 05-30-2019, 05:55 AM:
 
Well, you can look at SLS speakers, a Dolby product. I'm not sure what they use in the Dolby theatres... it used to be Christie speakers but that was before they acquired SLS.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-30-2019, 10:19 AM:
 
Am still not understanding why anyone would want Atmos??? Marketing perhaps, but most of the systems are incredibly disapointing. And its been totally unimpressive from the mix end as well. I think a really good 7.1 system is a far better investment that you'd be using the next 25+ years.

As for speakers, I would avoid ribbons and line arrays like the plague! We had a company here in the States producing ribbon speakers for Cinema and it was a near disaster. There is way too much screen loss so that the ribbons have to be pushed fairly hard. I believe this loss may even be worse on new screens intended to minimize moire on digital projectors. Anyway, this resulted in many shattered ribbon drivers over time. Line arrays have a whole lot of nasties going on with phasing and interaction between cones. They are fine for PA speakers of limited bandwidth though. Christie Vive reminds me a lot of the Bose Cinema System back in it's day (1980's). They used a lot of (five dollar) drivers to make a lot of (not very good) noise. The Bose subwoofer was ok, and pretty interesting in itself. That whole system disappeared within 2 years.

Mark
 

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Posted by Andrew Carr (Member # 9264) on 05-30-2019, 02:09 PM:
 
^ I remember hearing the same thing when 5.1 came out.

"Speakers behind me? This is just a fad and will never catch on!"

They probably said the same thing about stereo.

I do think the Universal ATMOS music remixes are a little much though...
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-30-2019, 02:56 PM:
 
Actually, that was VERY true to hear that of early 5.1 systems!! Many systems were hastily installed on to old tube amplifiers and decripid RCA or Altec stage speakers left over from the 4 track mag days. Many low quality Eprad and Smart processors went in so theater owners could post IN Stereo on the marquee. Can't tell you how many of those types of systems I ran across in Midwest States during my early servicing days and how many we upgraded. Even the latest Altec A-4 systems didnn't exist then... If you had worked in the late 70's and early 80's you'd agree that today we have speaker technology beyond our wildest dreams and we ought to have sound quality to match.

When people have paid extra to go to a movie presented in a special format, they expect smething spectaculuar. They got that up until the advent of Digital Sound. But when even today high end 70mm 6-track magnetic remains the defacto standard by which other sound systems are compared, well that pretty much sums up that the industry has gone backwards. Its been reported recently to me that there exist at least several Atmos systsems that have been properly time aligned after installation. I have added several of those places to my list of theatres to vsit, because they have been aligned using Smaart technology. But even at that, I am not expecting a lot because the mixes themselves are typically pretty unimpressive.

Mark
 

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Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 05-30-2019, 08:23 PM:
 
IMO Alcons are some of the best speakers in the world and would be my choice. Any prior opinions on ribbons should be pushed to the side until one has heard these.

But as you said they are very pricey. I think QSC would be the realistic choice.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-31-2019, 07:55 AM:
 
I haven't found speaker technology today to be all THAT much better. HF horn technology has come along a bit. An Altec A4 (210 cabinet) or A5 (825/828 cabinet) performed quite well and the 288 compression driver remains a pretty solid piece that, acoustically, does well. I'd take an A4 or A5 over most speakers in production today (in the proper rooms, of course).

The JBL 4675 was a significant speaker and evolved pretty well and remains better than 90% of what is made today. Whether you want to believe it or not, most 3-ways suck.

There ARE some good speakers made today for cinema but it isn't this gold mine of great ones that you lead one on to believe.

To me, most ribbons sound okay at first and then get very nasty as they get pushed. I've yet to hear one sound so good in their good range to make me want to fool with them.

As for Atmos, what I like about it is that it is more structured than other sound systems. That is, where the speakers go is well defined and how the sound is presented is well defined. With 5.1 and 7.1 you get more of an interpretation that can vary from site to site. I'm amazed at how many theatres with 5.1 systems that don't have surround speakers on the rear wall.

From a soundtrack mix perspective, back in the magnetic days with mono surrounds, where the speakers were relative to the person mixing the movie was uniform from dub stage to theatre. Once you moved to stereo surrounds, you mostly kept that but the shape of the room (and how well the designer did the surround array), the perspective of where the audio was emanating from was influenced by the shape of the room. With 7.1, the room itself plays a bigger factor since if it is long and skinny, the rear surrounds are distant, but if the room is short and fat, they are close. So, the shape of the auditorium versus the dub stage creates a difference. The sound isn't well located in the 5.1 or 7.1 system yet the room is providing some artificial location.

With Atmos, the relative speaker location to the prime seats is much better defined so that the mix in the dub stage and in the theatre once again match much better.

I also like that that each speaker now is EQed and level balanced.
 

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Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 06-01-2019, 09:32 PM:
 
The Alcons CR4 is the best cinema speaker ive ever heard. Try to hear some in a good room some day Steve. They sound like giant JBL M2's.

The JBL 4675 is one of my favorite all time cinema speakers. I used 4722n's for awhile in my own personal theater.
 

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Posted by Sean McKinnon (Member # 612) on 06-02-2019, 08:45 AM:
 
I think having full range surrounds with "Bass Management" wired without any series/parallel foolishness and the fact that you have to have proper power handling is the best "bang" for the buck with Atmos even in 7.1 more so in my opinion than the objects.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-02-2019, 12:41 PM:
 
I'll certainly give the Alcons a listen, if the opportunity presents itself. Things I don't like about it up front is the incredible vertical displacement between LF and HF due to super tall MF. I supposed they are doing something similar to JBL on the MF by "shading" such that as one goes up in frequency one is also vertically moving up the speaker in the mid range?

It also needs three drivers (Vertically displaced) to cover the high frequencies. I wonder if they have any combing or non-uniformity in the listening area

Compare that to a QSC SC-424. It is much tighter on its spacing and uses a common throat/horn for the HF/VHF. It works VERY well.

Oh, and the M2 doesn't use ribbons but does use a dual ring radiator compression driver, more akin to the SC-424. The M2 also has a very tight vertical spacing.
 

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Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 06-02-2019, 03:38 PM:
 
I hope you get the chance Steve. They use their own amplification too and I think that helps as well.

Thanks Im well aware of the M2 engineering. Why its surprising to me they both sounded similar. The M2 has a very sweet sounding horn. One of the smoothest horns ive heard.

That QSC 4 way is a very tasty sounding speaker too. I heard it only once although I wasn't certain if it was the exact same 4 way (424)
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-02-2019, 04:05 PM:
 
You can wire/amplify 7.1 surrounds full range and EQ them the same way as Atmos if you can get yor customer to spend the money. This was not possible or necessary with film based systems which were bandwidth limited on surrounds. I have always used home runs for all surround installs I have done since the 1980's, never series parallel crap unless there was just no other way to get the wiring to the speakers, or as ocasionally occured in existing sites where some times existing wiring had to be re-used. Your customer just has to be prepared to pay a lot of $$ to do the job right. In the case of this job, this is just wiring for the 22 surround speakers that went in at a 1200 seat theater. And it all had to be run in new conduit!


 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-02-2019, 07:07 PM:
 
I like Dolby Atmos if the movie theater spends the money to configure it properly and if the movie being played has a mix that actually makes use of the format's far superior potential at rendering various surround effects. The common transient fly-by surround effect can be so much better in Atmos. The classic 5-up-front Todd-AO stage channel scheme can be duplicated. Two rows of ceiling surrounds can help give ambient effects a bigger, more detail and realistic sounding feel.

But that's all a lot of "ifs".

My biggest complaint with Atmos is all the tame mixes that sound barely any different than a 7.1 mix. Too many commercial theaters turn down the fader to reduce complaints. Unfortunately at a low volume level those ceiling surround speakers will be difficult to hear. That was my biggest complaint with watching a Mission Impossible sequel at a former-Warren Theater in Broken Arrow. The sound overall wasn't very loud at all. The room was very tall due to the balcony but not many speakers were installed in the ceiling. I should have spent the extra money for balcony seats.

Hopefully the new kinds of multi-channel amplifiers from Dolby and others will help raise the quality bar on new Atmos installations, or improve existing ones.
 

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-03-2019, 07:05 AM:
 
So you ran 22 amplifier channels on that?
 

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Posted by Geoff Halls (Member # 7501) on 06-10-2019, 01:41 AM:
 
Check out Krix Speakers. They are based in South Australia. They have been doing Commercial Cinema for almost 40 years. They have an excellent reputation. They are installed in many screens across Australia, NZ, Asia, Middle East India etc.

https://www.krix.com.au/
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-10-2019, 09:23 AM:
 

quote: Steve Guttag

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So you ran 22 amplifier channels on that?

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That actually is about 95% of the surround wiring, note there are 7-500 foot rolls sitting there. The way the electricians ran the conduit used the shortest routes to each speaker. The theater was ~120 feet from back wall to the stage.Here is the back of the rack after all speaker wiring was pulled in. Note the old speaker wiring JB upper left.


 

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Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 06-10-2019, 10:34 AM:
 
You didn't twist your speaker wires
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-11-2019, 01:56 PM:
 
Everything is in conduit as per code in Wyoming. (Utah, Montana and Nevada) do not require low voltage wiring to be in conduit. The stage speaker runs are each in their own conduits through the attic. That was an option I gave them over twisting the pairs. Had they all ended up in the same conduit they would have been twisted. Overall, for oilfield electricians they did a great job.

Mark
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 06-11-2019, 02:20 PM:
 
Is that the HyArt Theatre in Lovell?
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-13-2019, 05:05 PM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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Is that the HyArt Theatre in Lovell?

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