The sound of real cinema?

Looking for a speaker system with Hollywood heritage? JBL Synthesis wants to help. Mark Craven treats his ears to a 9.4.6 array in a dedicated room where even the amplifiers have brains...

- Mark Craven

THE AMERICAN AUDIO marque JBL has a storied history when it comes to cinema sound. Founder James Bullough Lansing, then with his Lansing Manufacturing Company, answered the call from studio MGM in the 1930s when it sought loudspeakers of better quality to do justice to its slate of new 'talkies'. Working with Douglas Shearer, head of MGM's sound department, he developed the two-way Shearer-Lansing speaker. This largescale wooden cabinet, also known as the Shearer Horn, handled a frequency range of 40Hz to 10kHz (a vast improvement on the 100Hz-5kHz Western Electric speakers used in many theatres) via a combination of compression driver and 15in bass units. The rest is Hollywood history.

The company, now based in Northridge, California, maintains a leading presence in commercial cinemas, with its latest figures claiming around 40 per cent of UK theatres feature its loudspeakers, rising to 70 per cent of those in the US. Yet alongside its professional business, the JBL name has become well known in domestic audio, from affordable headphones and soundbars, through to high-end loudspeakers and AV electronics under its Synthesis brand. The appeal of the latter is obvious if you think the idea of home cinema is to replicate the multiplex experience in your own room.

Turnkey solution

For the last 11 years, JBL Synthesis has been distributed in the UK by Karma AV. The Yorkshire-based outfit handles the importation, installation and calibration of cinema setups that can easily reach in excess of £100,000. Not that you need to necessarily spend that much – the Synthesis range features nine loudspeakers and three subwoofers, with prices dipping down to £1,200 for the smallest SCL-8 in-ceiling model.