Inside the 8.8 Kipnis Studio Standard Home Theater System

The Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS), an 8.8 home theater system, is designed for people who live by the credo that bigger is better.

In the mind of Jeremy Kipnis, owner of Connecticut-based Kipnis Studios and the developer of the KSS, too much may never be enough for those who seek the ultimate audio and video experience.

Kipnis is a custom installer with a resume that features time as a projectionist, a large-format portrait landscape photographer and a recording engineer and producer at the audiophile label Chesky Records.

In developing what may be the ultimate home theater system solution, Kipnis draws upon his collective 37 years of experience in residential and commercial A/V.

The Genesis of an Idea

The roots of Kipnis' KSS system trace back to 1980, when he bought his first LaserDisc player.

The unit incorporated analog stereo sound, which provided the basis for him to apply David Hafler's surround sound theories that he read about in Stereo Review.

From there, he mated this audio system with a Kloss NovaBeam Model 1 and companion 78-inch diagonal pseudo-torus silver screen to produce what was a state-of-the-art system in the early 1980s.

By the end of the decade, Kipnis migrated into gear from Yamaha and, with some modifications, was able to implement surround in arrays up to 8.4 channels with true Dolby decoding.

In 2003, he started to experiment with 12.12 systems before arriving upon his current 8.8 standard.

"Eventually, I refined the relationships between loudspeaker type, size, range and room design to culminate in the 8.8 system I use today," Kipnis explains.

"This allows all adjacent channels to be just 45 degrees apart, rather than the typical 60 degrees of stereo or the variable interior angles defined by ITU (surround-sound standard) 5.1, 6.1, and 7.1. Consequently, the imaging of the sound is much more physically solid, and it's defined in three-dimensional space around the listener, which provides a more enveloping, immersive, propulsive sonic experience."

Top Brands Provide Horsepower

The 8.8 channels can be broken down into a total of 96 drivers, says Kipnis, arranged into 16 Snell Acoustics loudspeaker arrays that are driven by dedicated amplifiers of mostly tubed McIntosh MC2102s.

Mark Levinson and Theta Digital products are also used in the system.

The video portion of the system features a Sony 4K projector and screen from Stewart Filmscreen, and the total experience, Kipnis says, often exceeds the expectations of his clients.

"A KSS hand-tailored demonstration usually results in 'wow,' 'that's amazing' and/or 'it's like I'm 15-years-old again,'" he boasts.

With high-definition sources being upscaled to 4K, and with his own calibration techniques used in combination with non-perforated Stewart Snowmatte 1.0 gain screens, Kipnis's installations are able to produce more than three times the light levels set by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for Academy Screenings.

The result, he says, is that Kipnis Studio clients are able to see and hear their favorite programming as realistic, and better than a commercial theater.

The Trickle Down Effect

Kipnis' solutions come in three performance tiers: The Ciné Alpha, which starts at $10 million, for clients wanting an IMAX-sized experience; a middle offering called the Ciné Beta, for screening rooms and medium-sized theaters from $2.25 million to $10 million; and the Cine Gamma home theater package that runs from $500,000 to $2.25 million.

The three levels give Kipnis a selection of systems that deliver benchmark levels of performance for all of his clients, whether they purchase a KSS design or something more modest. Kipnis says the demonstration system is designed to do both.

Referring to a top-down selling approach from the KSS ensemble, he explains, "Since it is composed of the best components and integration in the world for this [demo room's] particular size and shape screening room (which is medium, by the way), it suggests how a smaller version could be achieved with the same level of picture and sound quality while perhaps not quite as much immersion," he explains.

According to Kipnis, the demonstration system easily helps clients appreciate and feel the need to think bigger than they ever thought possible for a residential or professional home theater or Screening Room installation.