Actually I happen to be a Cinema Technician and have quite a bit of experience with the 555 and the much higher quality 594 drivers. The 555 was designed with a bult in nominal roll off above 7khz as per the Western Electric optical sound playback specs. Thus the 555 did not require a roll off characteristic built into the x-over, it instead used it's own characteristic plus the roll off characteristic inherent in the optical slit lens of the sound reproducer of the day, about a 1.5 to 1.75 mil height slit of light that scanned the film's analog optical track. This kept the background noise bearable on variable density optical sound tracks. The 555 also can not handle very much power, 10 to 15 watts max! The 594 hf driver on the other hand was not designed with a built in roll off, has an extended response, can handle much larger amounts of power (50 watts) and is a far superior driver to the 555. They used to be found only in the largest of W.E. sound systems and thus are rare as hens teeth today because most W.E. systems were replaced in the 1950's when Cinemascope magnetic sound became the norm. In my 36 years of being a Cinema Technician I have only seen 4 of the 594's but well over 20 of the 555's. Interestingly the drivers that RCA manufactured way back when were junk by comparison to W.E. stuff. They utilized molded phenolic diaphrams in their HF drivers and had awful hf response... The last W.E. system I aquired came out of a Theater on the near north side of Chicago. It last ran a dual projector 3-D program and had been converted to a dance hall back in 1954 and was still operating as a dance hall in 1987 when I pulled the still operable Western Electric sound system out.
Cinema sound today has changed greatly with the advent of Digital Cinema. D-Cinema features uncompressed full bandwidth digital sound where film systems all had at least some data compression... worst to best as far as the amount of data compression... Dolby SRD, DTS, Sony SDDS. It is actually a small miracle that Dolby Digital sounded as good as it did on as low a bit rate as could reliably be retreived back off the film. One should also note that analog optical sound reproducers slit lens by the time SRD appeared had been pretty much standardized at .5 mil in height. Thus analog optical sound tracks could easily achieve a bandwidth of 16khz plus. I have seen exceptional slit lenses make it out to 20khz flat scanning a Dolby Pink Noise loop!! Although not as much film is being produced today there are many times when the analog Dolby SR SVA sound track can still sound better than the Dolby Digital or DTS playback. Sony SDDS died and went to the junk yard but the SDDS tracks are still printed on 35m release prints for the few that still work.
Speakers have also recently changed to keep up with the times. Electro Voice is all but gone from the Cinema Industry (no big loss really!) having been bought out by some German Company. They are no longer even at the yearly Las Vegas Cinema Convention. JBL, who was the staple of Cinema Sound has lost much of their market share to QSC Audio. Some of JBL's problems come from the fact that much of it is now farmed out to be made in China and the LF enclosures are now of very substandard quality in the last 5 years or so. I myself have switched entirely over to selling and installing only QSC speakers and amplifiers. The speakers have unmatched performance and build quality that would impress any high end audio fan and the DCS series of amplifiers are not only light weight due to the switcing power supply but sound wise are leap years ahead of anything Crown or other commercial amp manufacturers are building. There is a plethora of sound processors out there from Dolby, Ultra Stereo Labs, Datasat and QSC and all are now DSP based.
Anyway... enough on the state of today's cinema sound...
Mark
it's good to hear from someone who has actually worked with the drivers! thanks for your post.
it's interesting to hear your take on the 594. i have worked with originals and replicas... it is an amazing driver. i have measured a 594 in a 300Hz aluminum tractrix horn (klangfilm eurodyn) and it has been the best "measured performance" driver in my experience, from 400Hz to 9KHz. i also saw a pile of them removed (along with a bigger pile of altec 288's) from the ziegfield theater in nyc in the mid 90's when they went contemporary. they must have been in use for close to 50 years. i wonder how long THX, dolby and dbx will be around... the zeigfield has never been the same. many people have lamented the passing of the sound system there. vincent gallo did alright by it, though (i believe he made off with a bunch of the loot).
your experience with the 555 matches mine as well... 10 to 15 watts is right. in larger installations they always doubled up on drivers and bins... the big "mirrorphonic" system with the 594 was more efficient and much higher power. but, at 116dB per watt/m and with a workable range of 80Hz to 6.5K, the 555 promises certain things for home hifi that have few comparisons.
there are many 8" cone drivers, for example, that work in the same range. 2 way speakers are ubiquitous. but none have the efficiency, transient response or the linearity of the 555. the design of the baffle is of course the point of this discussion. it is clearly controversial. but your points about the evolution of the cinema equipment business are not...
also, to tom danley, i want to thank you for your posts. your summaries are the best. i would also love to hear your new horns...
jc
it's interesting to hear your take on the 594. i have worked with originals and replicas... it is an amazing driver. i have measured a 594 in a 300Hz aluminum tractrix horn (klangfilm eurodyn) and it has been the best "measured performance" driver in my experience, from 400Hz to 9KHz. i also saw a pile of them removed (along with a bigger pile of altec 288's) from the ziegfield theater in nyc in the mid 90's when they went contemporary. they must have been in use for close to 50 years. i wonder how long THX, dolby and dbx will be around... the zeigfield has never been the same. many people have lamented the passing of the sound system there. vincent gallo did alright by it, though (i believe he made off with a bunch of the loot).
your experience with the 555 matches mine as well... 10 to 15 watts is right. in larger installations they always doubled up on drivers and bins... the big "mirrorphonic" system with the 594 was more efficient and much higher power. but, at 116dB per watt/m and with a workable range of 80Hz to 6.5K, the 555 promises certain things for home hifi that have few comparisons.
there are many 8" cone drivers, for example, that work in the same range. 2 way speakers are ubiquitous. but none have the efficiency, transient response or the linearity of the 555. the design of the baffle is of course the point of this discussion. it is clearly controversial. but your points about the evolution of the cinema equipment business are not...
also, to tom danley, i want to thank you for your posts. your summaries are the best. i would also love to hear your new horns...
jc
Does QSC have a separate cinema speaker line, or just the same as their sound reinforcement line? Are you using more of the Wideline products, or conventional point-source enclosures?
Hi Mark
An industry person, cool!.
I would offer that there is additional albeit not well known choice for theater sound you might want to audition side by side with the other choices.
At work, while we mostly supply loudspeakers for commercial sound, we do supply some loudspeakers for movie theaters and other like things.
For example, some of the large Omni-max theaters that are being converted to IMAX are using our loudspeaker systems.
This one, the IMAX Theater at the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago was I think the first one.
DANLEY LOUDSPEAKERS CLARIFY THE CINEMA EXPERIENCE | The Wire on SVConline
In post #41, the operator comments;
IMAX cinema sound - Page 3
That being a giant version of a friends fancy outdoor cinema we supplied the speaker for a couple times, this one a few years ago which was a lot of fun and lead to the Imax theater work.
http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/pdf/KeithYates.pdf
While it will be some time before a retired SH-96 finds it’s way into a living room, they sound fine there unlike many large systems and like all of the synergy horns, you cannot tell there is more than one driver in a large CD horn even sticking your head in the horn mouth.
Actually when I heard the system installed at BYU, sitting at the far end listening to CD’s, the thing that came to mind was “boy, they could show movies through this system just fine”.
That venue being a pretty large place.
BYU's LaVell Edwards Stadium Adds Danley Jericho System - Lighting&Sound America Online - News
Anyway this stuff large scale hifi is fun isn’t it!.
Hey are you going to Infocomm, if so, stop by.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Hi Pano
I am working on "something" but have not heard back yet, i may be able to loan out a pair of speakers and many of regular production products (like the SH-50) are made in Candler.
Understand, i only design the stuff, but i am keen to see what emotionally uninvolved hifi people think about the sound and the possibilities.
I can't separate myself from being the parent.
If favorable, I may be more successful convincing work that home audio is something they should be interested in and not the land of magic rocks and wires .
I figure, you have A-7's now, are a horn guy and in commercial sound, that this makes sense to try. Anyway, that's the thought.
Best,
Tom
An industry person, cool!.
I would offer that there is additional albeit not well known choice for theater sound you might want to audition side by side with the other choices.
At work, while we mostly supply loudspeakers for commercial sound, we do supply some loudspeakers for movie theaters and other like things.
For example, some of the large Omni-max theaters that are being converted to IMAX are using our loudspeaker systems.
This one, the IMAX Theater at the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago was I think the first one.
DANLEY LOUDSPEAKERS CLARIFY THE CINEMA EXPERIENCE | The Wire on SVConline
In post #41, the operator comments;
IMAX cinema sound - Page 3
That being a giant version of a friends fancy outdoor cinema we supplied the speaker for a couple times, this one a few years ago which was a lot of fun and lead to the Imax theater work.
http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/pdf/KeithYates.pdf
While it will be some time before a retired SH-96 finds it’s way into a living room, they sound fine there unlike many large systems and like all of the synergy horns, you cannot tell there is more than one driver in a large CD horn even sticking your head in the horn mouth.
Actually when I heard the system installed at BYU, sitting at the far end listening to CD’s, the thing that came to mind was “boy, they could show movies through this system just fine”.
That venue being a pretty large place.
BYU's LaVell Edwards Stadium Adds Danley Jericho System - Lighting&Sound America Online - News
Anyway this stuff large scale hifi is fun isn’t it!.
Hey are you going to Infocomm, if so, stop by.
Best,
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs
Hi Pano
I am working on "something" but have not heard back yet, i may be able to loan out a pair of speakers and many of regular production products (like the SH-50) are made in Candler.
Understand, i only design the stuff, but i am keen to see what emotionally uninvolved hifi people think about the sound and the possibilities.
I can't separate myself from being the parent.
If favorable, I may be more successful convincing work that home audio is something they should be interested in and not the land of magic rocks and wires .
I figure, you have A-7's now, are a horn guy and in commercial sound, that this makes sense to try. Anyway, that's the thought.
Best,
Tom
Sure Tom, I'd love to hear them. In fact I'm sure I could work up enough interest here at the shop amongst the techs to go hear them in Candler, or go up in the truck, borrow a pair, then bring them back.
I am a likely candidate, as I do both P.A. and Hi-Fi.
OT (but speaking of Cinema) was just testing today part of our 175 feet wide screen that we'll be using in Nashville next month. That's a lot of screen!
I am a likely candidate, as I do both P.A. and Hi-Fi.
OT (but speaking of Cinema) was just testing today part of our 175 feet wide screen that we'll be using in Nashville next month. That's a lot of screen!
but wait!
there's more -
an excellent idea.
seems that those with a certain political agenda
did what they could to prevent any worthwhile
discussion about improving sound quality.
seems to me that the engineering staff at we,
were doing quite good.
the efforts they made toward reproducing the lower end of the spectrum,
was stopped in favor of pre-existing equipment from jensen.
financial constraints from the bean counters ...
only for those who were more interested in profit$.
those of us that prefer high quality are missing something.
perhaps you could explain,
in what ways this is a 'dead end'.
feel free to get technical.
there are many here that can keep up.
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Duhhhh...wait up guys!...some of us will need to bolt on our training wheels for this ride🙄
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Not politics...these people you speak of have no political sense or value,
except that they are easily governed.
I blame "religion"...belief independent of evidentiary experience.
This from the people who convinced themselves that they are the objectivist elite...hahaha, don't make me laugh. They are the ones making faith based arguments!
I guess it is easy to convince yourself that history lead up to NOW and somehow we are smarter and everything is better.
Any time there is an theory of evolution the people who wrote it are at the top of the pyramid. No exception here!
Well, history is not that simple. Neither is the development of audio technology.
Look, all historical analysis takes place in the present and really has very little to do with the concerns and understandings of the past. This is a fundamental reality that history professionals fully understand. It is all ex post facto rationalization.
Fortunately, this vintage gear that came out of a marginally documented and bygone cultural situation continues to play. We can hear it now, with modern ears, and evaluate on that basis.
It is on listening experience that WE gear continues to impress and excel.
People who are into this stuff don't even think about it as old...it is just gear to hook up and play in the present day.
The advanced age of the WE gear does lend a certain ironic air though, doesn't it?
We will never know exactly what the designers of 80 years ago were thinking and what they thought they were doing, or why they took some paths and not others. There are hints in journal articles and patent applications but no carefully spelled out, detailed public accounts.
This was all valuable proprietary information. Guarded secrets to some degree. We can only make informed guesses at best.
Even ordinarily useful stock arguments about manufacturing economics break down because the monopolistic leasing situation that WE worked under was so atypical that it is hard to make the leap.
We are talking about a short slice of time that WE reigned in film sound--1926 until 1937, when they signed the consent decree that forced them out of the industry. In those few years, tremendous fundamental inventions were made and quite a bit of audio equipment that stood the test of time.
It is one thing to theorize and calculate and discuss independent of experience, it is another thing to believe that old gear can't possibly be better because of "progress."
Well I guess you could say that...but you could also be very wrong.
Seriously, before trying to figure out what WECO did wrong...how about listening and trying to pin down what they did right?
Yeah, we all know that movie sound requirements led away from the original 555/Wide Range designs but the mid 1930s WE Mirrophonic gear addressed those problems and that is the best of its genre (multicell, 2 or 3 way), best that I heard anyway.
Still some "industry rejected" early WE big horns are totally superb for domestic music listening, so I am not sure how much we should weigh those historical theater sound parameters in our evaluations.
Know what "historical" means? No it doesn't mean "took place in the past." It refers to an event that took place in a certain social and cultural (technological) context at a particular place and time. A unique event, by this definition. We can never get back to it.
I ran a 15A system in a contemporary historical context last month in Munich. Yes, the installation had many problems, but most people liked it quite a bit. I was very sympathetic to many of the reports of failings of this setup and I understood what people liked about the sound.
All in all though, it was impossible to describe. You had to be there, I guess.
This is my main point.
Language, logic, and math do not precisely map the world of human experience and especially not aesthetic experience.
How far can we expect to get speculating on forums about the sound quality of things we have never heard? Sure, some good technical points can come out of such discussions and there were some made in this long-*** thread, but for me this thread was mostly about the limits of abstract (presumed) knowledge.
I learned more about the foolish habits of thought and preconceptions that hold us back.
TomTT--Those Jensen/WE woofer systems were totally awesome. I'd like to hear the 20" bass compression driver they were working on but the WE LF baffles were extremely fine within their range. Unfortunately, the multi-woofer W cabs and the big shorthorn baffles are probably even more rare and difficult to hear than the 15A horn! Few have room for that stuff even if it can be located!
Anyway, I'm expecting somebody to show up within the next 15 minutes and tell me Bag End must be better!
My brain being something like old swiss cheese is telling me that WE made a rather large bass driver using aluminum for the diaphragm and surround... iirc. I think it was strapped into a folded horn, iirc... and fyi, and fwiw, etc...
_-_-
_-_-
That was for the Fletcher system.
Patents for the driver and horn is online .... hold on ....
1,970,926 and 2,037,185
Patents for the driver and horn is online .... hold on ....
1,970,926 and 2,037,185
If you don't have any objective based data , then how can anyone take you seriously? Sorry but "I know what I heard" is for the old timers from the 50's.
Well some people are smarter but not all 😀
Well people were complaining about not being able to discuss the WE in detail but then again I don't see anything new. This thread has run it's course.
Maybe, maybe not. Mark Allen's post was a step forward.
If you don't find anything good in the thread, then no need to post in it. Simple.
If you don't find anything good in the thread, then no need to post in it. Simple.
For those interested I found this link regarding a horn speaker system created by Conn Organs in 1952...so it seems that large..large... Horn designs weren't entirely abandoned as early as some have suggested....
Earle L. Kent and the Conn Research Department
Earle Kent (kneeling) inspects giant speakers designed by Conn for the 1952 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Conn Archive, NMM.
"One of the highlights of Conn’s early years in the organ business was the opportunity to feature the Connsonata organ at the 1952 Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, both of which were held at the Chicago Convention Hall in July. Earle Kent himself designed the gigantic bass and treble speakers used to amplify the organ, among the largest ever constructed up to that time. The project was said to have cost $20,000. One of the speaker units was built at the Elkhart Connsonata plant, while the other series of speakers was constructed by Jensen Speaker Co. of Chicago. Kent was personally responsible for designing the horn-shaped amplifiers."
Earle L. Kent and the Conn Research Department
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Earle Kent (kneeling) inspects giant speakers designed by Conn for the 1952 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Conn Archive, NMM.
"One of the highlights of Conn’s early years in the organ business was the opportunity to feature the Connsonata organ at the 1952 Republican and Democratic nominating conventions, both of which were held at the Chicago Convention Hall in July. Earle Kent himself designed the gigantic bass and treble speakers used to amplify the organ, among the largest ever constructed up to that time. The project was said to have cost $20,000. One of the speaker units was built at the Elkhart Connsonata plant, while the other series of speakers was constructed by Jensen Speaker Co. of Chicago. Kent was personally responsible for designing the horn-shaped amplifiers."
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"Horn Shaped Amplifiers" Took me a minute to get that one.
Thanks for the great pic and the info!
Thanks for the great pic and the info!
the mid horns are on the left, in a WE16 arrangement. the ones on the right are bass bins only... fletcher style. but it almost looks like the drivers are coaxial? concentric tweeters? very 1950's. not sure. interesting that this design is almost exactly a combination of 20's technology and 40's technology, made in the mid 50's. yeah things are in a state of constant flux... like 70's plaid hunting shirts are the rage for williamsburg hipsters now. progress.
clearly the flatness of the design is aimed at getting it on a stage behind a screen or perhaps even behind a lectern? wonder how they dealt with feedback? this is undoubtedly not only a vocal PA, but for inspirational political soundtracks. hence the bass bins! that is a lot of bottom for the 50's, i'd say.
Yep and to make an addition:
Those are Jensen Imperial backloaded horns using the G610 coaxial driver. So here they are they are used as tweeters as well.