Christie Vive Audio Line Source Speakers

[Marcel Birgelen]

Marcel, I was given a semi-private Atmos demo with a Vive system and I, especially since my opinion was solicited, offered my opinion. As you may be able to deduce from this thread, it wasn't a flattering one. I have heard that my opinion was not in the minority either. I've been in actual, Dolby owned screening rooms (with Atmos)...no Vive in there either.

I guess you've heard those speakers on that same CinemaCon somewhere back in 2013 if I remember correctly. I also wasn't a fan of that particular demo. Like you indicated, there was some artificial harshness to it, which did not only distract, but actually caused some mild irritation... Maybe those ribbons cause an over-emphasis on the high frequencies, which needs to be toned town?

I guess the "Vive" deal was a combi-deal together with the Dolby Vision projectors, where Christie would essentially deliver most of the hardware-side of things for the entire Dolby Cinema project. That situation apparently changed after Dolby acquired their own "B-Chain" manufacturer.

But, I guess you've never heard one of their first Dolby Cinema prototype rooms shortly after they were finished with it? Whatever they did there, it worked pretty well and that apparently with the same speakers or at least same line of speakers, featuring those ribbon speakers as tweeters. That extreme harshness is gone, even at the extreme SPLs they play content in those rooms. They padded every square millimeter of those rooms with half a feet of rockwool and other dampening material and spend weeks calibrating those first rooms, so maybe the "magic" is in there, I don't know.

To be clear, this is no endorsement for Christie Vive speakers, as I simply have too little experience with any of them to judge them.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

8330 parts are pretty well exhausted. I think the tweeter is still available but definitely not the woofer or mid and the mid often bites it on the 8330. The 8340A does suffer from foam rot but last I checked, everything for that speaker remains available.

I, personally, not a fan of any VIVE system I've heard. But you need to listen with your own ears to determine if you would like them. Nobody here can tell you what you hear or like. I suspect that you would be able to find a great many adequate speakers for your room that sound better than the Vive. But only you can determine that.

If you want to try a surprisingly good speaker for your stage channels without breaking the bank...check out the QSC SR-1590 though you will likely find that the SR-1290 is sufficient too. I, recently, used SR-1590s as screen speakers in a commercial 7.1 system with bass management (rolled the lower frequencies into the subwoofer). It came out rather well with zero complaints. I guarantee that anyone watching movies in those auditoriums have no idea that there are just the three "surround" speakers behind the screen (plus subwoofer) instead of traditional screen speakers.

I actually never had an 8330 woofer or tweeter fail, just had a lot of surround foam rot in older ones, which is an easy fix.

[Steve Guttag]

As a JBL recone center, I got to see a lot of them. I got to see the failure mode of quite a few Altec, JBL and EV speakers. And, for the 8330/8330A, when they are used in digital cinema, the mid ranges die first, then the woofers. The mids overheat their voice coils and deform their vc formers. Oddly, I don't recall ever needing to change the tweeter in them. For the 8340/8340A, it is almost always the woofer and almost always foam rot. For the 2245 (used in the original 4645)...when digital audio for film hit, most of the time it was the voice coil driven out of the gap (over powered)...over time however, foam rot. Another form of foam rot that would get the 2245 was the internal filter. Below the dust dome, covering the hole in the pole piece is a foam filter. It too will rot and the pieces will get down into the gap. When foam rots, it turns into this nasty goo that sticks to things.

[Carsten Kurz]

Hold up there. Dolby, to the best of my knowledge, NEVER had an exclusivity deal with Christie or the VIVE for Atmos.

Well I didn't say that. I said they had an exclusive deal for Vive in Dolby Cinema installs initially. That's a statement from a Christie executive at the time. Made some sense as such all the projection and sound hardware for Dolby Cinemas came from Christie as the sole supplier. Don't know for how long it lasted. But long enough that one can boast Christie Vive surrounds as original Dolby Cinema surrounds.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Keep in mind though that Dolby Atmos was released at the end of 2012, while the first Dolby Cinema room opened in late 2014. In the meanwhile, none of the European installs I know, other than the Dolby Cinema ones went with Vive hardware. I wouldn't even know where to buy Vive speakers around here...

[Sean McKinnon]

Mark, I still use Apogee AE2's for surrounds on rental jobs and installs where I need a high SPL, super wide, and narrow in appearance speaker.