Stevens Home Theater - The Fun Begins - Page 6

Couldn't agree with you more.

Yesterday, I picked up another Velodyne sub. I found a Velodyne HGS15BGII at a great price that needed a new home. So I did what any good audio enthusiast would do...I went and picked it up immediately.

He said it was in "pristine" condition...well not by my definition of pristine. It had a few tiny marks on it but works perfectly! It has a piano black finish and accepts XLR inputs. Another deal too good to pass up.

I haven't had a chance to run it through it's paces but I had a few minutes to listen to it. Definitely much more authority than my F1500. Super tight, and I can feel the bass much more than with my F1500. I guess that is to be expected when you go from a 250 watt amp to a 1250 watt amp RMS/3000 peak. I think it's safe to say there's a little head room there when I need it. It also has a slightly smaller profile than my F1500. It blends very nicely with the RF-83's, even in 2ch.

This Saturday, I'll get a chance to use my new SPL Meter to help dial it in.

I'm selling my current F1500 sub to help pay for the new sub. I don't think the F1500 would make that much difference paired with the new one.

I've got it listed for $350 on CL. I listed it last night at 1am and got an email at 4:30am and first call on it at 7am. Guy is interested in it and is going to call me tonight. Another guy called in another state and wants it and is trying to get his parents who live by me to buy it for him, pick it up and hold it until he comes back down to visit in a month. I figured at that price point, I should be able to sell it by this weekend.

How much are you asking for your F1000?

The only F1000 that sold on Ebay recently can be seen Here It sold for $89.57 + $48.95 shipping.

Sorry, didn't see your comment. Florida weather is great right now. Nice and cool, sun is shining. What else can you expect from Florida? At least it's not August. Wow...does it get hot and sticky. Who do you play for?

I thought I had bought a defunct HGS15 sub, it started messing up when I hooked it up. It seemed like the amp had issues. I put it back on Craigslist to sell broken, as-is with full disclosure of what the problem was. See the post below for details of what I found.

Sounds like a plan. Good luck with your sell. Shouldn't have a problem selling it for that price.

Ok, I feel like a turd! A few minutes after I posted the HGS15 on CL, I receive a call from a guy who wants to buy it. As I'm talking to him, he wanted to know the exact model number. I turn the sub around (nothing playing) and as I was reading the model number off to him, I bumped the sub cable. Blam! The abnoxious noise came back. If I wiggled the cable at the connection, the sound went away. Could it be that the problem lies in a faulty sub cable. I just happened to have another one. Hooked it up and I cannot get it to reproduce the sound that I was hearing, even at full volume on the sub.

Now I have to make a call to the lady to appologize for accusing her husband of selling me a faulty sub. Could there be a fault at the connection on the sub, possibly, but at least I now believe it is not an amp problem but either a cable problem or a short in the sub connection.

I tried hooking the original cable back up and cannot get it to reproduce the sound again. CRAP! Now what do I do? LOL.

Well after 1 hour of the sub playing flawlessly, I made my phonecall to appologize for my accusations that they knowingly sold me a defunct sub. So far, the sub sounds amazing. Plenty of power, tight, clean reproduction, lots of SPL. Awesome deal for $200.

Thanks Mike. It's been a fun process putting it all together. There are a lot of guys that have some very sweet setups. Jason (mn_hokie) is one of them as well as BIGmouthinDC's room. I used the photos from Jason's risers to help me with figuring out how to build mine. You learn a lot here.

The Show Me Thread is a great thread if you wanna look at lots of pics of other theater rooms. Some are super low budget, some are extreme money. You can make a home theater to fit your needs and budget. It just takes some time and effort.

I look forward to having you (and your family) over anytime.

This evening, me and a friend installed an outlet in the attic for the projector, installed the ceiling mount and mounted the projector. I still need to tidy up the cables some. We originally ran a remote cable for the projector and were going to install a sensor in the front of the room but I'm thinking I might not need it. The remote works great by pointing it at the screen. I still have to tidy up the wires coming from the ceiling but at least it is mounted and I can finally use my rear seats again!

Now that the projector is mounted, I'm having trouble getting the zoom memory set since now that it is mounted, I had to adjust the lens shift all the way down to get it to line up with the screen. By doing so, when switching from 2.35:1 to 16:9, the image moves way below the bottom of the screen and the vertical adjustment isn't enough to bring it back up to fit the screen. I've posted in the Panasonic AE3000 thread to see if I can get some answers.

Here are the dimensions that I measured tonight.

Here are some dimensions that might help.

Room Dimensions:
13' W x 19' L x 10' H.

Projector Dimensions:
Ceiling to bottom side of the projector (with it upside down) is 16"
Throw Distance - 162"

Screen Dimensions:
The bottom of my screen (viewable area) is 31 1/2" from the floor
The top of the screen (viewable area) is 47 1/2" from the ceiling
40" x 95" viewable scope screen (103" diagonal)

Primary Viewing:
140" from my head to the screen
When seated, my eyes are 41" from the floor

Rear Seating:
Sitting on 11" riser
12" from the back wall.

This weekend has been a little frustrating. After mounting the AE3000u, the zoom memory settings were no longer correct. Totally understandable since the projector is now on the ceiling and at a totally different position in relation to the screen.

With the projector level, I used the manual lens shift to bring the image down far enough to barely fit on the screen. The vertical lens shift is at the very limit. The problem that I'm finding is that when the lens shift is not in the center, when you zoom out, the top part of the image doesn't move very much but the image expands downward and outward as opposed to expanding from the center of the image when I had it sitting on a barstool.

I believe I will need to lower the mount about 6" and raise the screen about 6". That is about the max I would want to adjust either one of them but I'm not sure this will be enough to allow me to change from 16:9 to 2.35:1 using the zoom memory feature without having to also manually adjusting the lens shift. This is not cool...that defeats the whole point of going with the AE3000u for the zoom memory.

To increase my frustration, the suggested mount that I bought says it will adjust from 11.42" to 32". Well, that is partially true. It will do 11" and it will do 32". But there is quite a gap that you cannot adjust to in the middle. Basically there are three pieces to the mount. I first mounted it using just one of the three poles. (shown in the above images). This placed the projector at 16" from the ceiling to the center of the lens. If I bring the projector down another 6" which would place the lens at 22" from the ceiling to the lens. The problem lies in the fact that in order to lengthen the pole, you have to use all three poles. The top and bottom pole is small in diameter and the middle pole is larger so that the top and bottom can slide into it. The small poles are the only ones that can fit into the ceiling bracket and the bottom pole is necessary because it has the clip that secures the projector to the pole. Since the top and bottom pole meet in the middle of the center pole, the shortest extension I can get is 30" from ceiling to the center of the lens. 16" to 30" is a huge gap that I am unable to adjust to. It's either 16" using just the bottom pole or 30" or greater using all three poles. When I add the other two extension poles at 30" from the ceiling, when I'm standing on my riser in the back row, my head is 3" under the projector and I'm 5'11". A 6'2" person would hit their head on it. This is the mount that I bought and was recommended by Visual Apex which is where I purchased the projector from.

This isn't going to work without having to angle the projector downwards. I really would like to keep the projector level if possible and not have to keystone the image.

Any suggestions?

You have a fantastic setup John. Am I correct in saying that the center of your projector and the top of the viewable area of your screen is 1 1/2 apart? If so, I believe this is my problem. The center of my lense is quite a bit higher than the top viewable area of my screen. My problem lies in the fact that since I have a 10' ceiling, it will be difficult for me to get the projector down close enough to the top part of the screen without being too close to the heads of people standing on the rear riser.

I am waiting for the cabinet guy to get here to install the entertainment center/false wall in the theater room. Man, this has been a long time coming. If I had paid him money, I would have been really ticked but he is doing it at no charge in exchange for me designing his website. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pics tonight.

Cabinet is being installed as I type! Finally, the theater room is getting close to completion. My camera absolutely stinks! I'm going to try and borrow a better camera today before I post pics.

Today is an exciting day for me. The cabinets are not finished, but I finally was able to get to see what he has been working on for the past 3 months. LOL. He and 3 of his workers showed up to install the base, middle section and top section. They will have to come back next week to install the left and right panels where the main speakers will go. The cabinets have a "Slate" laminate. I originally wanted a cherry laminate but was encouraged by some of the Klipsch forum members to go with a darker laminate so not to distract during movie time. I'm really glad I went with the slate, I think it looks very nice and isn't just a plain black finish. Gives it some character.

Here are the three pieces installed. The 6 panels were covered with grill cloth. The top three have been screwed in and the bottom three are held against the cabinet with velcro. Since we were bartering services he was trying to keep the cost down as much as possible. Once it is fully installed, I will probably come back and replace the velcro with hindges. I didn't know the top panels were screwed in until he texted me after they left "reminding" me that they were screwed in, not velcro. This will make it a challenge to get the RC-64 installed. I'll probably crawl up there, unscrew it, mount the RC-64, then reattach. That or I could slide it in from the side and have it laying on a towel to keep it from scratching the bottom when I slide it to the middle panel.






Top Left Corner



View of bottom right side, looking across to the left side. As you can see, the sides are open on the bottom cabinet. There only separation is for the middle cabinet. This is where the A/V equipment will go. Subs will go on the left side and eventually one will be added for the right side.






Closeup of slate laminate.




Another closeup of slate laminate



View from left side looking across to the right side through the center. This area will be totally open. I think this will help my RF-83's to breathe. They will not be "enclosed" in a cabinet. The top cabinet has a shelf across the bottom and no separators across the width of it.



View with screen in place (not mounted, just leaning against it) They asked if they could put one screw on the backside to temporarily hold it in place until they could come back and add a shim (I think that's what they called it). I opted not to let them screw into my brand new screen. Can you blame me?






I really like how they turned out so far. I'll post more pics next week when they come and add the side panels.

View inside cabinet with screen installed.



View inside top cabinet where the Klipsch RC-64 center channel speaker will go







Sides will be completely open allowing main speakers to breathe more.

I moved my speakers into their places and took some room pics.

Hopefully next week, Tim will be over to install the side panels to conceal the main speakers. More pics to follow when they are installed.

I need some suggestions on how to mount the screen. The Elite screen is designed to use 6 or 8 wall brackets that slide into a groove on the back of the screen. I do not have a wall behind the screen, it is all open as you can see from the pics below.

The screen fits pretty snug left and right (1/8" gap) and has a 1 1/8" gap at the top. I need to secure the screen to the cabinet without drilling into the frame of the screen. The screen needs to move up maybe 9/16" to center it into the frame.

They plan on making a shim (I think that's what they called it) or trim piece that will mount in front of the top part of the screen to hold it into position. I do not know how low it will hang but I don't want to cover the top velvet border too much since that's what hides any overspill. Also, if they cover part of the top border, it will appear to be shorter than the bottom border unless it is only 1/2" overhang or less.

The more I think about it, the more the shim idea might work best. With that, the screen would not have to be raised up any. It will have the same look as the cabinet. I would not need to add velvet to the top and bottom gap since there would be no gap.

Guess I just have to give them dimensions so that it barely fits over the screen. Maybe make the trim piece 1 1/4" since the gap is 1 1/8". What do you think?

Just wanted to get some input and ideas.

I figured out a very simple way to mount the screen. I used the 4 supplied wall brackets and then secured the brackets to the frame using zip ties and an L bracket I had left over from our vertical blinds.

Thx man. Not a stupid question at all. Do you see the silver metal piece on the frame of the screen that the zip tie is attached to? The screen came with four of those brackets. Normally, you would mount the four brackets to the wall and the frame snaps onto them to secure it to the wall. Since the actual wall is a few feet from the screen, I had to come up with an alternate method of mounting it to the cabinet. It's an inexpensive way of mountijng, but very secure.


Thx. So where are the pics of your room? Ya gotta share bro.