In the early 1940’s, James Lansing created the “Voice of the Theater” cinema speakers, which set a new standard for the motion picture industry. Lansing continued to develop cinema speakers after founding JBL in 1946.
In the early 1980’s, JBL engineers developed a system concept that was new to cinema: the JBL Bi-Radial® constant-directivity horn technology, which grew to become the JBL 4675 system and set a whole new industry standard. The system was installed in the industry’s reference theater—the Motion Picture Academy’s Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills—which would also go on to be selected as the first THX® Approved speaker system.
And innovation didn’t stop there. During the next decade, JBL introduced the first modern 3-way screen channel system, the JBL 5674, which was installed during renovations of the Goldwyn Theater in 1996 along with custom JBL surrounds and subwoofers, delivering incredible impact, detail and clarity to every seat in the house.