JVC EXOFIELD XP-EXT1 PERSONAL HOME THEATER SYSTEM

TRUE SURROUND SOUND

from headphones has been an audio holy grail for decades, but with the ever-increasing power and value of digital signal processing, we’re now getting closer to drinking from that particular chalice. JVC’S latest effort is the XP-EXT1 Personal Home Theater System, a set of wireless over-the-ear cans with a slim processor/transmitter that uses the company’s Exofield DSP processing to digitally rejigger surround-encoded soundtracks, including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, for your in-head listening pleasure.

The business end is a set of large-but-comfortable wireless headphones that require the included processor/transmitter to work—you cannot pair them with your phone or other Bluetooth source. Their nonreplaceable battery is charged via any USB power source; a cable is provided, though, oddly enough, no charging port is present on the transmitter/ processor. (JVC specifies battery life at 12 hours between charges, and in a series of much shorter sessions I believe I came close to that.)

The cans are fairly beefy— I measured 335 grams (for comparison,

Sony’s WH1000XM3 wireless noise-cancelling cans weigh about 255 grams)—and nicely finished, if a bit plasticky for a kilobuck. Of course, you’re paying for a lot more here than just ‘phones.

Which brings us to the processor/transmitter: a slim mini-component barely 0.75 inches tall, with a quartet of tiny pushbuttons on its top edge, two rows of pinpoint LEDS with nearly illegible labeling (they show selected input and mode) and an array of connections around back. These include: 3 HDMI inputs and an HDMI output with EARC, an optical digital input, an analog RCA stereo input, plus a tiny jack for the component’s supplied cord-lump power supply. The HDMI connections do not support Dolby Vision HDR passthrough. An ios/android app is required for both setup and use but, a bit surprisingly, there’s no Bluetooth-input capability to wirelessly send audio from your smartphone or tablet even though the app communicates control data with the system via Bluetooth. (Audio data travels from the processor to the headphones via a dedicated 2.4/5.0 GHZ link.)

SETUP

After I had downloaded JVC’S app to my iphone 6s, I followed its prompts (and those in the supplied quick setup guide) to hardwire the headphones to the processor via the supplied sub-mini cable. The next step was to run a quick series of click-and-sweep test signals with the ‘phones on my head to calibrate their performance to my individual head-and-ear characteristics. You can store a total of four such “runs” to accommodate the heads of other household members.

While the calibration routine proceeded as expected, with the process completed and the hardwire to the ‘phones disconnected, I couldn’t get anything to play out of the JVC cans. I then tried the analog input, which dutifully played stereo audio from my ipad jacked into the transmitter/processor via a 3.5mm-inch cable. Take a deep breath— easy.

I powered everything down, stripped all the wires, and started over with the simplestpossible layout: cable box and Blu-ray player’s HDMI outputs connected to the processor’s HDMI-1 and -2 inputs, and the processor’s HDMI EARC output connected directly to my TV, bypassing my A/V preamp-processor altogether. Success! I then transferred the JVC processor’s HDMI output to an HDMI input on my A/V pre-pro, connected the prepro’s monitor-output to the TV, and everything worked exactly as it should: headphone sound when the JVC system was powered up, and sound from A/V sources passed-through to my amp/speaker setup when it was not.

LISTENING

With audio now happening, a quick cable channel scan turned up a Harry Potter film ( Goblet of Fire) with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. No question about it, the JVC headphones setup did a dramatic rendering of surround. Envelopment was pronounced, and lateral panning effects travelled distinctly, though front-toback placement seemed more challenging. The front-to-back

“stage” was compressed into a band stretching only modestly further forward, and rather less back, than the dimensions of my skull. Emphasis on “mine”: like everything to do with headphones, individual results will vary, sometimes wildly, from head to head and pinna to pinna, so my impressions are just that— my impressions.

Tonally, however, results were less satisfactory over a wide range of programs. While JVC’S Exofield processing was spatially stable and believable, lows and midrange sounds, especially isolated voices such as news announcers, though well centered, suffered

obvious tonal shifts. Excessive brightness, added sibilance, and a haze of hollow, “phasey,” processed sound that I found distinctly unnatural led the list, while the lower octaves displayed some distinct oddities. Deep bass was still there, but more common bass, midrange, and lower-midrange were dramatically reduced or “scooped, almost as if a coarse comb filter was in action sucking out certain narrow bands. The entire 80 Hz to 320 Hz octaves seemed to be cut substantially, sometimes by 10 db or even more.

JVC’S app features a Custom setting where you can adjust a five-band graphic equalizer ±6 db, but this had a much less audible effect than I’d expect, and I could not come close to restoring the bass weight or male-voice body I heard as missing. Wondering if my Exofield calibration was somehow awry, I ran its setup a total of eight times, but the results all were about the same. Defeating the Exofield processing yielded ordinary stereo sound, revealing the EXT1 cans to be generally competent, if somewhat bassheavy, wireless headphones. The processing has four submodes: Flat, Cinema, Music, and Game. These appeared to be EQ variations, with fairly little distinction among them.

I next cued up the original 2014 Dolby Atmos Blu-ray demo disc and was rewarded with much better overall quality; still rather bright and faintly phasey, but not as heavily processedsounding as what I heard from 2.0 and 5.1 bitstreams. On the Dolby disc’s Leaf trailer, for example, the surround presentation was first-rate for headphones. The JVC system did well with Atmos height,

rendering the fluttering, falling leaves as having originated somewhere distinctly above my eye-line, and descending well below my jaw, and the envelopment of forest ambience was impressive. Even more so was the thunder at the track’s conclusion; the simulacrum of real, sub-30 Hz deep bass here was one of the better ones I’ve experienced via headphones.

I experienced similar results when sampling a range of both Atmos and DTS:X scenes on Blu-ray movie discs: still with a slight processed sheen on most voices (most noticeably male ones), consistently bright, and with the odd missing bass fullness. All of this varied much from disc to disc and from program to program. But I always heard much cleaner and more satisfying surround sound from Blu-ray (both regular and Ultra HD) than I got with less pristine sources like cable.

At its best, the JVC system’s performance made it morethan acceptable for conditions like late-night viewing or baby naptime where running regular speakers is not possible. (By the way, at its maximum setting the system could produce, subjectively, a modestly theater-loud level.) The biggest remaining shortfall to cover here is the EXT1’S lack of any head-position sensing. This means that if you turn your head, the soundstage/presentation’s orientation turns with you, while the visual image of course stays locked on the screen. This discontinuity tends to collapse the illusion rather drastically, of course, but is not an issue as long as you stay in one position with attention focused onscreen.

About midway through my time with the system I downloaded a firmware update (v1.0.3). This proceeded at a truly glacial pace on my phone’s connection, which I know to be very fast (about 300 Mbps), taking more than 40 minutes just to download. I didn’t discover any added features, nor did I find any noticeable changes, audible or otherwise, and the separately listed Decoder and DSP software versions also did not change.

ERGONOMICS

I had some hands-on issues with the EXT1. First was the tiny, dim control labelling on the processor mentioned above. Second, the unit’s HDMI sensing and switching were slow. Jumping between HDMIconnected sources required a good 6-7 seconds, and when turning the JVC processor unit off or on—which is how you switch between amps-andspeakers and headphones playback— recovering audio required about 15 seconds in either direction.

Although there are hardware pushbuttons on the ‘phones to turn the system’s Exofield processing on/off and cycle through inputs, volume adjustment is carried out via a buttonless “+/-” area on the right cup

that functions as a capacitive touch control you access with your thumb. But there’s no tactile landmark such as a bump or dot or recess to tell you where to put your thumb, so going “up” or “down” is a coin-flip. Also, the few-seconds delay before you get noticeable action doesn’t help matters. (JVC’S app, on the other hand, provides visualfeedback volume control.)

CONCLUSION

I found the JVC XP-EXT1 Personal Home Theater System’s variable quality— ranging from quite good with the most pristine sources, all the way down to decidedly mediocre on TV sound and stereo music— puzzling. And at $999, it’s not exactly a casual purchase. If you’re seeking a private-listening solution that produces a palpable surround experience from top-quality sources like Blu-ray disc, JVC’S is worth exploring. But if you simply want an all-purpose setup for music, movies, and TV, this one probably isn’t it. Either way, the XP-EXT1 is definitely a try-it-for-yourself proposition.