Stevens Home Theater - The Fun Begins - Page 7

Yes, I am very pleased how the whole room is turning out. The ceiling was painted flat black, the walls were painted with I believe a semi-gloss. The walls have the orange peel texture.


Well, I had the website designed and coded in a week, maybe two. It's been sitting with no content on the pages because he has not sent me any info. He emailed me about 9 photos which I have added to his portfolio page but the rest of the pages have some latin placeholder text, that's it. I haven't coded the shopping cart until he emails me info about the products he wants to sell. No sense going through all that work if he may not ever get around to sending it to me. I've told him several times that the single thing that slows the progress of the website down is me waiting on content. I have one lady that paid me a deposit well over a year ago. She has yet to send me content for her site. I just don't get people like that.

Last night my wife mentioned that it would look fine to have the cabinets the way they are, without adding the side panels for the main speakers. Part of me agrees, especially because it gives me greater flexibility to position them. I believe I will have to scoot them back some towards the wall in order to fit them behind the panels. What do you think? Panels or no panels for the main speakers?

Try to visualize this...Tonight my 10yr old son and I got a little brave and decided to mount the RC-64 in the top part of the cabinet above the screen. The room is 10' high and the cabinets stretch from the floor to the ceiling. I currently do not own a ladder so I brought in our bar stools. Jacob and I stood on the barstools and I hoisted him into the cabinet from the open sides to unscrew the two screws that are temporarily holding the top center panel cover in place. Once removed, I moved 4 barstools in front of the cabinets. Jacob said he was nervous about having to pick up a 62 lb speaker. I told him "If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't have put you up there. I trust you son." What a cool teachable moment for my son to hear his Dad say I trust you with a $600 speaker and I have confidence that you can help Dad move this speaker without damaging it.

I placed a towel inside the cabinet for the RC-64 to lay on since the cabinet is made of wood and would scratch the bottom of the speaker. I placed a pillow on two barstools and laid the RC-64 on the pillow. Standing on the other two barstools, I lifted the RC-64 and gently slid it into place in the upper cabinet. My son helped me to gently guide and slide it into position. Once positioned, I had him hook up the speaker and I lifted the rear of the speaker while he screwed in the angle adjustment. Jacob did an amazing job. He was nervous about being inside the cabinet and being that high off the ground but he trusted his dad because he knew that I wouldn't put him in a situation where he could get hurt.

To my surprise, the angle was almost dead on with my primary listening position. I really didn't think it was going to be enough angle but it was. My wife was in bed so we didn't get to test it out very much until she came in and asked to turn it down. I'm really hoping it isn't too distracting with the center being above the screen. Probably no one will notice, but I notice because I know where it's there. We'll see if it is distracting once I get a chance to play a movie at a good volume.

Now that I see how the cabinet was made, it would have been PERFECT to have an acoustic transparent screen and have mounted the RC-64 directly behind the screen. Arggg. Too late now. LOL.

When I ran the YPAO in the yamaha, it said not to use Back Surrounds if I did not have Side Surrounds (since I currently have a 5.1 setup) so I switched the RB-35's to the "Surrounds" and wow, what a diffference. To be honest, after mounting them, I totally was not satisfied with the surround effects. I felt I was not really hearing them. Granted, when I turned them off, I did notice them not being there and I realize surround speakers should not bring attention to themselves but I really wasn't hearing much from them during big surround scenes.

In the short, semi-loud scene we watched, I totally heard a difference. Guess it helps when you have the speakers connected to the correct terminals on the receiver.

Here's a shot of the speaker in place.

Kids are awesome. Those are fun times together.


If you look at the pics below, there are no sides on the cabinet. They are totally open. He is going to come back and add another panel that will angle towards the listening area to match the angle of my speakers. This will conceal the front speakers.






This isn't an issue. I only have one sub (Velodyne HGS15) and it is located behind the bottom left panel. Currently there is only a bottom shelf on the middle section, not on the bottom left and bottom right sections so the sub is sitting on the floor. Therefore it is not "connected" to the cabinets and do not vibrate the screen. The cabinet is very sturdy and does not seem to be effected by the SPL's in the room.


Yes, Bartow is very close to us, I'm not far off Hwy 60. If you ever want to stop by, you are more than welcome.

Totally appreciate the thoughts. That's how I have gotten to where I'm at now with the theater is by soliciting other's feedback and suggestions. I do plan on adding panels to the walls since there is definitely a significant echo in the room (clap test).

I'll have to check into the Linaccoustic, never heard of it before.

Oh no, just haven't had much to post. Still waiting on the cabinets to be finished. What a nightmare it has been. They are supposed to come sometime this week to finish them (I've heard that before). We'll see. Once they are finished, I'll post new pics, then will begin working on acoustics. Thx again for the advice.

That was great. I've never heard it quite put that way but you are right. The cabinets look wonderful, the amount of time it is taken to get them finished is what is frustrating.

I sent an email to the guy saying, "I would also ask that the entertainment
center for my theater room completed before we go live with the site. I think that is fair."

Somehow, he took that as a threat. I made this statement really as an encouragement to him to get with it and finish my cabinets. The quicker he finished them, the quicker I would have his site ready. Since there is no money exchange, it is only fair that I upload the website when he finishes the cabinets. As I told him, I have been more than patient. 4 months to have an entertainment center be built is a little extreme. If he would have told me from the beginning it would take that long, fine. The problem is that on several occasions, he had stated he would be over to install them and each time, something came up. He has now turned the entire project over to one of his employees to finish it. Oh the drama. I'm just ready for them to be finished and I can move beyond this. Was it worth it, I believe so...but not without a bunch of headaches. He has done a great job with the cabinets, much better than I could have done. Just wish it would have happened faster.

They showed up on Saturday to install the side panels. They had planned on permanently installing them but I explained to them that I really needed to be able to have access to the speakers. I asked if we could attach the side panels to the main cabinet with hinges so that it could be opened up like a door to gain access to the main speakers. This would allow me to easily have access to them. The side panels shown below are not installed yet, just leaning against the cabinet to show what it will look like.

As you can see, the bottom three panels under the screen are held in place with velcro. This is temporary since they totally don't work. He is going to use magnets to hold them into place. We'll see how that goes. If it doesn't work, I'll install hinges on the panels.

Thanks Happy. I don't think the hinges will rattle but I could be wrong. Once installed, if they do, I can probably put some type of material between it and the wood.

Thanks John, I posted a few questions on your thread regarding the zoom memory for the Panny but just looked back in my own thread and you have already answered these questions. Unfortunately, I can't bring my projector any further downwards. Looks like I'll have to either angle it downwards and adjust with keystone or have to manually use the lens shift when switching from 16:9 to 2.35 material. Sadly enough, that was the main reason why I went with the panny.

Yeah, I've thought about adding lighting later on so that you could easily see the speakers but when it's movie time, they would dim. I would need to upgrade my lighting switch. Currently I'm using a Lutron Maestro but it only has one scene you can preset.

My velcro isn't working at all, that's why we're having to use something else.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. The velcro came unstuck from the cabinet. One problem that I see with the velcro is that I have three cabinets. Each time I open one, I will have to align it with the others or it will drive me crazy (minor OCD issues). LOL. The idea is to drill into the cabinet enough for the round magnets to fit and use adhesive to keep them stuck to the cabinet. They are coming out Thursday morning to finish the cabinets.

I received a call from the owner of a local High End Audio/Video installer. He has a customer that is flying in this weekend for a week and is considering the Panasonic AE3000 but she has not been able to find a dealer that has it for demo. The owner asked if I would mind having them over for a demo. Works for me. I told him I haven't really calibrated the video other than with the Avia II disk and he said he has some computer software that I can borrow. I'm going to call him tomorrow to see if I can borrow it before they come over for the demo.

Apparently she has a 120" screen in 16:9 format. I figure I'll show her some of the Planet Earth since it has remarkable video quality in 16:9 format.

My wife doesn't get it either. She is just fine with the two dinky speakers in the old 32" CRT TV as opposed to the Klipsch speakers in the theater room. LOL. Go figure.

What is "GTG"? Get ToGether?

Gotcha. Thx for the link. None near Tampa, FL yet. I'll keep watching. Maybe when I get finished, I might host one. Might be fun.

Sorry for the delay in updates. It's been a crazy few weeks.

I had a couple come over to check out the Panasonic AE3000u. They seemed to really like it and were pleased very much with the picture quality it provided. It was fun having them over.

Last week, I found a pair of Klipsch RF-3II's and a RC3II center channel for a friend who lives in Alabama (same guy that came down to help me build my risers). We picked them up for $375 which was a great deal. I had them hooked up in the theater room when he arrived. He currently has sony and KLH speakers. Needless to say, he was blown away and thoroughly pleased. His wife brought in some of her CD's that she was familiar with and even she said she was hearing details she had never heard before. We checked out some movie demos as well and the RF-3's sounded very nice. He is going to be very pleased with them for his HT.

While he was down, we found Satin Nickel Surface Mount Euro Hinges that will work for the cabinet doors. The hinges have a very tight spring in them. We decided to remove the spring from the hinges since the frame of the door is somewhat flimsy. By removing the spring, we needed to somehow keep the door closed and I didn't want to use velcro so we found some simple clamps that hold it nice and snug to the cabinet.












We only had time to mount the bottom center door but that is where the A/V equipment is and is the one I use the most. I'll hopefully get the other two doors mounted this weekend. It's great to have it open like a regular cabinet door instead of having to remove the panel, place it to the side, and remount it once I'm finished. Even if I were to add more velcro to make it stick better, it just doesn't function like a regular cabinet door should.