Rich H's Variable Image Size Home Theater - Build Thread - Completed! - Page 7

Thanks so much about the room.

As to subs, I'm quite familiar with them in home set ups. A pal of mine reviews audio gear and gets best-of-the-best level subs to play with for his home theater, which I often get to hear.

But more pertinent: I do Sound Design for film and TV and I listen to playback in top level mixing theaters with speakers/subs that make every home theater I've seen sound like toys. I'm kicked around often enough by super low bass so I know what I'm missing. After a long day of working doing sound tracks, I don't need to be kicked around much more, so I prefer my system as it is - very rich sounding but easy on the ears.

Sorry, I've been on vacation...

Yes sort of. If you look at the fist shots of my room on page 2 you'll get the best idea of the aesthetics. The curtains, for instance to the corners of the screen, are not pulled as tightly into the corner as they could be. This is because I don't want them THAT tight - I have them drawn out to meet the line of the black "stage" area on the floor, which makes for a neat, composed look all together.

Depending on how much wall you have to cover, and which material you use, your curtains may draw considerably smaller/tighter. FWIW, the black curtains that pull across the entire back room - about 12 feet of curtain - stack back into the corner about 1 1/2 feet wide or so.


I tested various black velvet materials from local fabric outlets. Since I was using lots of black velvet in the room - surrounding my screen, my screen hanging side masking curtain panels, speaker covers etc. I wanted both the darkest and the nicest looking velvet I could find. (Again, this is because some portion of the velvet would always be visible - if it weren't I wouldn't have cared so much about aesthetics).

The Fidelio black velvet, favored by many here, was both the darkest and the richest looking so that made my choice. Yes, it is more expensive than average velvet. But if you aren't as picky, almost any black velvet will do. (Though for me: "I don't always use velvet...but when I do, I use Fidelio.." except when...)

I also used the Devore Black Velvet (a bit cheaper I think?) for the newer black curtains that hide behind the brown curtains, and which pull around the room. It was both thinner (better to stack behind the existing curtains) and acoustically transparent (so I can hear my back surround speakers through it), as well as being almost as dark as the Fidelio velvet.

"Understanding?"

I guess you haven't read this thread yet.

No human could have been less interested than my wife in this idea, or more afraid of it ever happening to our home. It did indeed take a long time to get her on board. In my case I hired an interior designer
during portions to help with decor and design choices. My wife wouldn't trust my decisions, but trusted a professional, so it smoothed things out when the interior designer gave the thumbs up "don't worry, this will look nice."

Best o luck. You can tell your boss that my wife has been won over by the results and is now proud of the room.

Just a heads up:

in my itch to get things as black around the image as possible, I still have the ceiling left.

I went with a dark brown felt for the ceiling and I'm glad it did because it really cuts down on ceiling reflectivity. But it's still not as pitch black as the Fidelio black velvet and I've always wanted the ceiling to disappear as completely
as the walls and floor now do. So I have an idea I'm going to implement, a hopefully pretty cheap and easy way to have a "hood" of black velvet over the screen. The goal is to keep the aesthetics mostly as is, but the new velvet panel will become the new valance hanging down over the screen (hanging straight down just as my current valance boards do). But when I wish I'll be able to easily hook it up so it becomes a black hood over the screen, doing away with any slight ceiling reflection or visibility. I have the velvet - I'll post pictures when it's done.

I also had some other ideas that get the same effect and I'll try to post sketches of those too. I know a lot of us are stuck with the struggle between aesthetics and wanting bat-cave type performance, so I keep looking for ways to
keep good aesthetics for when the lights are on, but allowing for quick, easy change to bat-cave performance when desired for a movie.

Way ahead of you farkem.

Guests now sit behind a wall of black velvet curtain. The film projects through a hole in the curtain. There are eye-holes cut out for guests to peer through and watch the movie. I'd ask them all to wear sunglasses, lest the whites of their eyes reflect back to the screen, but that risks the picture looking too dark.

Home theater is about compromises....

Why are you posting this in my thread?

Are you somehow referring to the early photo of my old Audio Physic Scorpios and wish to buy them or something? If so, sorry but I sold them years ago.

Cheers,

Why thanks yourtoys7!

Yeah, my aim was to make it as cozy as humanly possible. Once all the fur throw blankets are out, and big cushy pillows, it's like a womb. I don't think I've had a single guest who didn't remark about how comfortable the seating and room was for lounging and watching flicks.

I drove myself crazy trying to get every detail to meet my criteria, and in the end it's been well worth it.

(Though, I'm working on another room tweak as I write this).

If there is on issue I have with the system it's the good and bad side of the RTI emote control system I'm using. The good side of the coin is that it is so powerful and reliable, able to do anything I ask of it. And works very reliably (once all the kinks were initially worked out). The big downside is that it's a installer-programmable-only system. RTI doesn't give out it's codes, programs or instructions for programming to the user, only to the dealer/installers. Which means every time I want to change something, or add a new piece of equipment, I have to call the bloody dealer who of course charges and arm and a leg for additional programming. Worse...my original dealer has shut down leaving me adrift to try to find someone else to program when I need it. For someone used to doing stuff like this by myself, it can be pretty maddening. If it didn't work so well I'd be more pissed. (And I've looked at other options for remote control. I just don't like them as much, and I'm not sold on the iPad software versions as I prefer a remote with hard buttons and I think a device built as a dedicated remote, always "on" and ready to use is ultimately preferable to me).

Anyway, thanks again.

Only two warheads. Programming the macros was a hassle. I need to upgrade my remote next year to achieve full nuclear deterrent.

Thanks. Guests and friends may **** an eye at the effort I've gone to in the room, but they really appreciate the results.

LJG,

One place to get the Fidelio is Vogue Fabrics on-line.

I use an interior decorator - I tell her the size of the curtain I need, she tells me how much velvet to order and she has it sewn for me into curtains.

Though, anyone with some sewing skill, or shmoozing skills with someone who can sew, can get it done easily.

Adding the curtains was easily one of the best things I did for my system. It's just so quick and easy to go from cheery room to bat cave for movie watching.

Spaceman,

Thanks very much for the input.

That velvet does look very dark! So that's a great option.

For me I had two considerations: The darkest possible velvet I could find combined with the nicest looking, because the velvet would be feature prominently on my screen wall and would hang as masking panels. The Fidelio was the one that happened to fulfill both those qualities: it was the darkest I could find but also the nicest,classiest looking. I had tons of different black velvets to check out, but they also felt and looked kinda cheap next to the Fidelio which has a thick luster. So for me the combo of super light absorption with the better aesthetics was worth the extra cost for the Fidelio. Everyone's MMV of course.

I went cheaper on the black velvet curtains that I use to surround my room because those remain hidden behind my nicer brown velvet curtains when not in use.

It's been interesting watching the high end Home Theater installation business touting more and more new systems that employ the variable image size concept, where one is not stuck only with a fixed image height (CIH) or fixed image width (standard set up). Instead the image is to be varied in size either to maintain a constant image size impact throughout aspect ratios (somewhat like Constant Image Area) and/or to vary the image size depending on the source content being used. Here's yet another example, this time the venerable Stewart Filmscreen touting their new Director's Choice "infinite masking" system:

http://akhomecinema.azexis.com/blog/2013/02/14/directors-choice-demo-at-ise-2013

I felt like the odd-ball out on this issue, skipping even CIH to use a wall-filling screen and employ 4-way automated masking with zooming to simply vary the image size to maximize the impact of any particular movie or source quality. It's been the single best decision I made of all for my home theater. I never grow used to any single image size as it's so often changing so the thrill of going to the largest image size, or even using a smaller but super-sharp and punchy image size, never wears off. And never any black bars, always the image floating in a field of jet black.

What gets me shaking my head is the EXPENSE of these systems, aimed as they are at the ultra high end clients. And the way these systems are touted they are the newest, state of the art concept "vary the image size TO THE SOURCE! YOU ONLY CAN GET THAT WITH THIS PRODUCT!" to justify these systems - some in the over $100K price range. Meanwhile, I'm thinking "Hey, I've got pretty much that...completely variable masking, automated via macros with as many pre-sets as I want, even some automated zooming now...and the masking system making this possible I did for around $4,500."

But..salesmen gotta sell...

snpanago,

I'm glad you've found some inspiration in my zany efforts.

As for curtains and acoustics: Yes that is something I worried about. My room already errs slightly to the "dead" side and I didn't want it to sound too dead once I pulled velvet curtains around the room for movie watching. Also, the curtains would be pulled over some of my surround speakers. To that end instead of the thicker Fidelio black velvet I used for my screen wall, masking and speaker covers, I researched very dark black velvet that was acoustically transparent. A bunch of people on the UK AVForum raved about this stuff:

http://www.whaleys-bradford.ltd.uk/product.htm?productID=124

And claimed it was totally acoustically transparent (people used it for AT masking, and even for speaker grills and covering surround speakers etc). I ordered a bunch and found quite an amazing combination of being very dark and light absorbing velvet that allows sound to pass through. It's not absolutely perfectly acoustically transparent, t as I could just the teeniest bit of roll off when I placed a patch over a speaker (probably similar to the effects of an acoustically transparent screen, or even some speaker grills). Since these curtains would cover so much wall space I just wanted sound to pass through as much as possible.

As it turns out, they work very well. With the curtains fully surrounding the room it does get a tiny bit more dead, but I'm sure nowhere near if I"d gone for heavier less transparent fabric. The sound is still amazing with all the curtains pulled, both in terms of the sound of my rear FX speakers passing through the material, and the room in general.

Hope that helps.
Edited by R Harkness - 4/1/13 at 6:45am