Surround Speakers Retrofit and Selection

[Daniel Fredrickson]

Hello everyone,

We're looking at replacing our JBL 3310 surround cabinets with something better-suited to handle modern digital mixes (we keep blowing our HF's). What's everyone using these days? I'm looking at several models from several different manufacturers (including JBL 9300's) but would like to know if anyone has any preferences/recommendations for a certain brand or product line.

[Marcel Birgelen]

What kind of room size are we talking about? And what kind of amplifiers?

For smaller rooms, something like the QSC SR-8101 is a safe bet as it fits mostly within the specs of the JBL 3310, but offers a whole lot more overhead. Haven't seen a blown HF on those yet myself, although they use soft-domes as tweeters and I've heard about blown HFs on them too.

The QSC SR-1020, for example, is a lot beefier, so you also need the right amps to be able to drive them, but their titanium HFs are pretty much indestructible.

[Dave Macaulay]

OK, the 3310 is a pretty weak speaker even for analog unless it's a very small room - or you have a lot of them. Rated 75W per.
We have recently used a lot of 9300, 9310, and 9320 surrounds - no problems yet but they are pretty new. In relatively large Atmos rooms the 9310s or 9320s are used for the "wide" speakers, the frontmost side surrounds. 9300s or 9310s elsewhere depending on the power and sound pressure needed.
These are much larger than the 3310 so you would need to check the mounting height to see if they would be either a hazard or easily reachable from the floor.
The other JBL options are the 8320, decent surround at 150W rating and not much bigger than a 3310 - or the 9350 which is nice but rather expensive.
QSC and others have good surrounds as well. You should figure out what you actually require and go from there.

Note that an underpowered amp will cause HF driver failure. When most amps clip they produce extremely high levels of HF distortion. Modern cinema amps have clip protection that reduces the distortion by reducing gain when they approach the clipping limit. Check that the amps are not reaching maximum output level on loud surround level.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The 3310 is also a pretty inefficient speaker. You will need to install more boxes and have more amplifier power QSC has performed the best for me in regular 5.1 and 7.1 sound systems, I don't advocate directional sound because so far it has been very lame. At any rate, since you have not provided the size and volume of your room, no one here can make a definite recommendation of any specific model

Mark.

[Steve Guttag]

I'm not too overjoyed with anyone's surround speakers, at least not for conventional 5.1/7.1 systems. If replacing the 3310s, from JBL the 8320 is the most direct replacement, if not upgrade. The 9300 and 9310 perform well (well there is no significant bottom end, but what can you expect from a speaker of that size?), particularly if installed with their prescribed DSP tuning. They tune up well and sound fine. However, aesthetically, not everyone likes them. I, for one, wished they offered them with a full grill so the horn wasn't visible either. Odds are, coming from 3310s, you'll stop at 8320s or 9300.

On the QSC side, I suspect the SR-800 will be a bit small (would have to know the room dimensions) so your order of progression would be SR-1000 and then the SR-1020 (which is like comparing the JBL units listed above).

[Marcel Birgelen]

I agree, the JBL 9300 an 9310 are OK speakers, but they look ugly. I don't understand why they couldn't simply copy the design from the 8320 and extend the grill all over the front.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I have never found surround speakers to be either truly full range or good looking no matter where they come from. Even back to the old Todd-AO days when they used to have Altec 604's in small boxes all over the side and back walls of an auditorium. Those looked... strange and out of place. The JBL 9310 is by far the fugliest speaker to ever be on the market.

Also, forgot to mention that the QSC's are also the easiest to mount. The mount can even included with the speaker if you order them that way. Just be sure to mount them at the correct height and distance apart for proper coverage. With JBL you have to purchase the mounts separately unless they changed recently that with the new speakers.

Mark

[Steve Guttag]

We had some theatres around here, by in the day, that had Altec 604/620s...they were far from "small boxes" and they were, by FAR the best surround speakers! Man what a breeze to tune! As you know the Uptown, in DC used Altec A7s for surround speakers (12 of them) bi-amped (and that wasn't really enough).

QSC surrounds come with half the mount, always. You don't order them that way. You merely order the part that goes on the wall (comes in two angles for side or rear wall mount). There is also the option of a yolk mount for most of the models too.

JBL, on the 9300/9310 chamfered the rear of the cabinet so one can toe-in the surrounds 15-degrees.

JBL's 9350 is also interesting and I'd like to play with it a bit. I see potential there but working with it in the cinema is the real test. However, I'm sure the 9350 is out of this project's budget.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Some of the old Altec based systems were incredible. Here is a descriptive for the Cinestage in Chiago right when it was ready to open. Michael Todd which was literally connected, had a similar all Altec-Ampex system but had JJ projectors instead of DP-70 because of space limitations. Cinestrage 2.jpg

[Daniel Fredrickson]

Thank you for the replies everyone. I'm sorry for the delay, work has kept me tied up this week.

What kind of room size are we talking about? And what kind of amplifiers?

I have 4 different sizes of rooms.


Here's the setup for our auditoriums. We're running 7.1 in each:

1: (smaller house)
Dimensions:
42' deep x 35' wide x 27' high

Current surround with the 3310's:

2 LS, 2 RS, 1 BSL, 1 BSR

Surround Amps:

LS/RS: Driven by 1 ch each on a QSC 1644
BSL/BSR: 1 ch each on a QSC 1622


2: (small-midsize house)
Dimensions:
46' deep x 40' wide x 27' high

Current surround with the 3310's:

3 LS, 3 RS, 1 BSL, 1 BSR

Surround Amps:

LS/RS: Driven by 1 ch each on a QSC 1644
BSL/BSR: 1 ch each on a QSC 1622



3: (mid-sized house)
Dimensions:
56' deep x 46' wide x 27' high

Current surround with the 3310's:

4 LS, 4 RS, 2 BSL, 2 BSR

Surround Amps:

LS/RS: Driven 1 ch each on a QSC 1644
BSL/BSR: 1 ch each on a QSC 1622



4: (larger house)
Dimensions:
63' deep x 57' wide x 27' high

Current surround with the 3310's:

4 LS, 4 RS, 2 BSL, 2 BSR

Surround Amps:

LS/RS: Driven 1 ch each on a QSC 1644
BSL/BSR: 1 ch each on a QSC 1622

For smaller rooms, something like the QSC SR-8101 is a safe bet as it fits mostly within the specs of the JBL 3310, but offers a whole lot more overhead. Haven't seen a blown HF on those yet myself, although they use soft-domes as tweeters and I've heard about blown HFs on them too.

The QSC SR-1020, for example, is a lot beefier, so you also need the right amps to be able to drive them, but their titanium HFs are pretty much indestructible.

A few years ago we did try switching one large house's surround channels over to 2 Crown/Harman XLC2500 (2 channel amps) and never blew any HF speakers after so perhaps we are a little underpowered?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Crown/Harmon are two names to avoid. Lost count on how many Crown amps I have repaired since 1973, but more than any other brand..

[Marcel Birgelen]

@Daniel Fredrickson

Both the QSC DCA 1644 and QSC DCA 1622 should be able to drive the JBL9300 or QSC-SR1000. Even the QSC-SR1020 would work, but you wouldn't be able to get the most out of it, so if you're not planning on upgrading the amps, it's probably not a worthwhile investment. I wouldn't go for the QSC SR-8101. I'd also install the same surround speakers in most of the rooms and buy one or two spares if possible. The exception could be the bigger house, maybe the SR1020 or JBL9310 would be a better fit, due to the relatively low count of surround channels.

Now, my preference is slightly biassed to the QSC speakers. But the JBL9300 aren't bad speakers, but they're, in my opinion, pretty ugly, with the exposed horn. In any way, both speakers would be a significant upgrade and I'm sure you'll clearly hear the difference in a surround-heavy mix. Also, you shouldn't have to worry about blown-out tweeters anymore.

[Frank Angel]

Years ago at college, I attended a event at our affiliated women's college, St. Mary's College in South Bend. It was in their brand new auditorium at the time, the Laughlin Auditorium that I saw some event and marveled at the innovations of the new place. It featured isle-less seating which I had never seen before and even more interesting, a speaker system in which side-wall surround speakers were hidden in a pattern of designs along the side walls. The designs were round circles of various colors and sizes, some as large as maybe 10 feet diameter. They were on the expanse of the side walls, front to back. Seems the speakers were built into the walls and those larger circles were made of speaker cloth of different colors. Seeing how effective that method was, I always wondered why more of an effort was never in cinema design to disguise ugly hanging surrounds, which to me, always look like an after-thought rather than a part of the actual aesthetic of a cinema's interior. Seems like an easy thing to do, i.e., build surrounds into the walls, especially when walls are now made quite thick for sound abatement between rooms. And if there isn't space within the wall, with a bit of ingenuity, a false floating panel covered with acoustically transparent cloth would hide them and itself become an attractive part of the interior design. Surround speakers could be hidden (and I believe should be hidden) behind such a facade and completely invisible and unobtrusive to the patrons.

I have heard the idea postulated that letting the patrons see the surrounds is impressive and they want to know that there is surround sound in the theatre. But I would counter that given 1) nowadays everyone assumes every theatre must have surround sound, and 2) almost everyone on some occasion has seen the massive speaker stacks at concerts or even hanging speaker arrays in school auditoriums that all make the surround that are hung on cinemas side walls look pretty anemic and not very impressive, it that's what hanging them is going for. The idea that having them visible will somehow impress patrons is a fool's delusion. I think what's more impressive is to have no speakers visible yet the patrons hears good sound emanating from all around with no visible indication of where it's originating. Now THAT's impressive. And it just look so much more pleasing.

And now that I come to think of it, maybe one of the reasons that I just don't like the looks of surround hanging on the walls,is that it reminds me of my high school where all the classrooms had these cheap 8in PA speakers hanging in the front of the room...lo-hi tinny sounding speakers which, when they clicked on, you know it wasn't anything good coming your way; it was very often the principal admonishing us for something -- or worse, calling out a student's name, summoning him to the office. You knew that nothing good was going to befall that poor dufus. My name was called a lot; cheap wall-hanging, slant front speakers!

[Marcel Birgelen]

For existing venues it's often extremely difficult to hide those speakers into the existing walls. Don't underestimate the depth of most of them, for example. Also, many surround speakers aren't suitable to be built into walls.

The original Dolby Cinema design, of which a few rooms have actually been built (two to be exact, both of them in the Netherlands) do hide the surround speakers, both those on the sides, back and those on the ceiling. The room itself is a black box design, though with "stealth-fighter-style" panels, designed to reduce reflections of both light and sound into the audience.

In our own screening room, we've hidden the side surround speakers into the wall, but it was impossible to do this for those on the ceiling for example. If we ever redesign the ceiling, I might want to try to incorporate them some more, but it will be a difficult task given the amount of clearance there is.

The problem is even more significant if you try to incorporate them into the designs of an old movie palace, with heavily decorated walls and ceilings.

The Stag Theater at Skywalker Sound is a nice example of how to hide speakers into walls of something that has an "art-deco" look to it. But even they have speakers hanging from the ceiling since their upgrade to "Multi-Dimensional Sound"...

[Steve Guttag]

I can take or leave visible surrounds. If visible, the interior decor and surrounds should not clash. And by that, I don't mean move the surrounds to fit the decor. The surrounds should go where they perform properly and then design the decor to incorporate them.

Most of the rooms that have I have encountered that have "invisible" surrounds have taken a performance hit in order to hide them. In order to get a covering that doesn't impede the speakers acoustically has to be relatively thin (you know, effectively speaker grill cloth). But typically there is too much surface to use such thin material. And again, the aesthetic police get involved and then the speakers get a performance hit by being behind something not as acoustically transparent has it needs to be. Blasting the speaker harder and turning up the highs to overcome it always sounds worse.

I've done an ATMOS room where the speakers were recessed into a channel in the ceiling and then a lightweight fabric brought across to hide them. It looked REALLY good. However, acoustically, that channel became an untuned speaker cabinet, particularly for the front speakers that are angled way back. A lot of energy was directed back into the channel (and it was lined with fiberglass but the timbre difference on those front speakers was significant).

So, if you want to hide them, I'm good with that but don't be fooled into believing that there won't be a performance hit. Heck, even the stage speakers take a hit for being behind the 9KHz filter (aka screen). One of the only speakers that seems to deal with it unscathed is the QSC SC-424 (or any with the MHV-1090 Mid/HF/VHF)...there is a separate driver coming in at 7KHz that doesn't cause the normal HF portion to have to get an exaggerated boost to get through. It also allows one to have a Constant Directivity horn and not get the typical roll off.