"Shh, No Talking" Home Theater... - Page 7

Thanks ADAIR, happy t-day to you too

I haven't played any movies yet, well not to be noted anyway, just did at low volume to make sure all speakers worked. So, the rattling I noticed was during test tones, not a movie.

I'm not sure what you mean separate joists for the ceiling isolation, I did mount my setup to the current ceiling/upper floor joists. I think I'm going to buy a few more IB3 clips and isolate my PJ mount from the joists that way.

As far as my lights, at one tone, it was the bulb fixture, I'm going to do a few more in a few minutes to note exactly what tones do what.

Well, this update is so overdue I'm almost embarrassed

I have done quite a bit since my last update so bear with me...

First came the 2nd layer of drywall, as you can see in the first few pics I didn't have studs behind a few pieces so I had to "clamp" the drywall together while the GG set up..











Here is a shot of the PJ wiring hanging like a champ...



And a shot of the metal box I installed, which turned out to be a nightmare so I replaced it with a plastic box (no picture, sorry)...



And then came the dreaded mudding and taping.. I was at first ready to hire out the work, but then my good buddy justin came along and assured me it wouldn't be that bad. Well, at least I saved some money, right? ...

What a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE idea, so much mudding and taping it was ridiculous. Either way, it's done now...







Then came the primer...





Followed by the paint (which came out terrible btw)...







Why terrible you ask? Well, I learned the hard way that I don't know how to paint properly... I let my arms do the work and not the paint, so, MAJOR roller marks were left behind, it looks absolutely disgusting. Disgusting to the point I want to buy another gallon of paint of each color and put on a proper final coat. I might not do the walls because they're not as bad as the ceiling and also because the fabric panels will cover most of the color but it still bugs me

Anyway, on the more positive stuff. I got a neat popcorn machine for Christmas!!!



I also figured out how to seal up and mount my LCR speakers to the front wall... To seal them, I made a lip around the cab that will sit nice and flat against the wall with some weather stripping behind for the seal.. To mount, I installed a 2x4 above the cabs in the back and mounted them to that with brackets from home depot... The end result I am pleased with

Here is what the speaker would look like originally (cab reversed just to show gap)





Here is the lip and how is sits against the wall...









At the bottom of the cabs, you will notice a lip that extends "outward". That is what the screen frame will sit against and therefor be properly spaced away from the speakers.

All speakers installed in the front wall...



Next came the assembly of the fabric panels.. Using a similar technique to GPowers, I used "cabinet grade" plywood from home depot, cut proper length strips that were 1 1/16" x 3/4", assembled them into frames with a few braces if I felt were needed and then added a beveled edge to the perimeter using the table saw. The frames are 1 1/16" deep to accommodate 1" rigid fiberglass behind certain panels. I don't want to give up to much real estate for thicker panels but I still might space them away from the wall a tad for the "free lunch" as LocalHost would say...









Who sets up their camera to take a picture of them self cutting the bevels on the panels? Thats right, this guy does!!





Here are a few shots of my new PJ mount. I decided to seal up the ceiling and make a "box" for my PJ, mounted it to the wall so it's more isolated/dampened than when it was attached right to the ceiling joists. The sides are all open for ventilation, but I will be covering the front and sides with fabric covered removable panels (similar to the wall panels)









And not much here but these are custom brackets I fabricated to hang my masking panels. The panels needed a bit of attention to detail for correct mounting but they turned out well

Now because I'm doing an AT screen, I can't just throw up fabric covered styrofoam like others could, so, I made an open frame the proper width and will cover with GOM. I kind of made these blind because I couldn't find much for making panels for an AT screen, don't know why (shrugs).









Here are my fabric and carpet choices...



Here is a shot of the carpet sample next to the seat cushion...



And finally a shot of the wall panels temporarily hung. I will be attaching them using grill guides from parts-express. They are tiny but they work well









Here is a RCA jack I installed which will be connected to my receiver for audio tests and setup...



And then finally, my seats, anxiously waiting to be installed in the room.. C'mon carpet!!!

Thanks Miahallen


Thanks for the kind words. And yes, I understand that green glue isn't a glue at all, but there are no studs behind those seems, I didn't plan that too well but I did put some screws in (unfortunately drywall to drywall only) and I guess that will have to do :-/

Not much has been done since last update but carpet should arrive today or tomorrow! I will have to make a few calls and find an installer. I can't wait to get the carpet and seats in so I can start doing some real testing and calibration!

Just a note, I hope it's because of the empty theater room that cause my IB subs to lack any impressive noise coming out of them yet. I did a quick level match of all speakers (roughly 75db) and I can barely hear the subs when a movie is playing, I really can only hear them if I go stand in the rear of the room, even then it's pretty subtle.

I guess I was just expecting a very echoey but still very booming sub setup right after install but once I install the carpet and seats and then do some calibration, things will hopefully pick up quite a bit...

If anyone can chime in and tell me that what I'm experiencing is normal, I will be quite relieved

No, no audyssey yet, just a simple level matching with spl meter, behringer amp turned up about 1/3 of full volume and avr sub level at about neutral. All speakers and subs set to roughly 75db at main lp.

I'm sure it's just my room acoustics and probably more to do with the lack of ANY calibration yet but still expected more boom boom as is

EDIT: I went downstairs and made sure my wiring was correct and it is. Now, on the back of the amp, there are a number of small switches. They are there to let you control the low pass filters, clipping protection on/off, as well as Mono/Bridged mode or Stereo mode. My problem was that I had the amp switched to "Parallel" mode which would let me send the "sub out" signal from the AVR to one of the inputs on the AMP which will then send that one signal to both outputs, as well as turning the other "input" on the amp into an output so I could theoretically daisy chain multiple amps together. Well, instead, I added a Y-splitter to the "sub out" cable so I could input the signal into both channels but never set the switches to "stereo" mode.

Now that I made that small change, the output SPL isn't much louder than before but I can feel the low lows vibrate my clothes, not very strong, but it wasn't there before

I can take a few pics of the rear and post them. I haven't done any extra bracing except for the 2x4 I mounted for the LCR cabs. I also haven't cranked the subs, at all, so I haven't noticed anything, yet :-/

Carpet will be coming thursday and getting installed the 2nd following saturday!

Also, I just realized that when I installed the RCA jack in the wall for testing, I forgot to add in a 3.5mm jack as well for the Audyssey mic cable. As far as I have read, I can use a 3.5mm stereo cable for an extension and it will not hurt anything along with the total run length being roughly 10 ft longer, should be straight

This doesn't sound right.. Untill I let Audyssey do it's thang, my system will severly lack on the low end? What about the folks that don't use Audyssey or a similar auto EQ?

With my Table Tuba in my Larger living room, I don't run the LFE channel hot at all and the bass is very satisfactory.. Audyssey has done its thing so maybe that has more to do with it than I thought. Hmm..

Also, I know that the LFE channel is mixed about 10db hotter than the rest of the channels right off the bat, but having to crank it an additional 10db seems unrealistic, especially for having such huge drivers in a small room. Interesting...

Also, by turning down the AVR sub level and upping the amp gain, won't that reduce the signal sent to the amp, therefor making the amp work harder than it should have to?

I was always under the impression that if you want flat (same SPL from sub as the rest of the speakers) then you would turn your sub amp up/down just enough to get a 0db reading on your AVR sub trim. Maybe my thinking is coming from car audio where you would turn your sub output all the way up on your head unit to get full voltage to the amp and then adjust amp up or down from there.

Btw, I did the level matching with the AVR's factory white noise test tones.

Maybe today I''ll set aside an hour and really go through the house curve link you posted

A Milestone has been achieved!!! Carpet and seats are in!! Check it!











And here is a shot of the back of the wall, to show the "bracing" for the LCR's and sub's...



Now, I'm sure I'm getting ahead of myself, but the bass is just plain non-existent at the seats right now

It's like, the front 3 ft and rear 3 ft of the room house all the bass and everywhere else (both rows of seats) have nothing... Hopefully the bass traps will help out with that, or that I'm NOT in a null and just the front/rear walls are getting huge peaks! Almost time to run some sweeps and see exactly what is happening!

Thanks! As for the chairs, they are the most comfortable theater chairs I have ever sat in! Are they more comfortable than your Berklines and what not? Probably not, no, absolutely not ( :-P ) but what they do is take up less space, and they add that genuine movie theater feel at home and that's what I was going for so I am very happy with them

No, I don't think I mentioned where I got them. I was originally going to snag them from "seatsandchairs.com" but found the same exact ones on ebay from seller "lhsinmn". I bought from him because his prices were close to the mentioned site but free shipping on top of that. Any issues can be resolved without problem

Not too big of an update yet but here are a few new toys that arrived yesterday



The remote is the URC R50, pretty cool remote so far and pretty easy to setup. Just having trouble finding the perfect codes for my Marantz SR5005 AVR, the SR5003 that I have upstairs works perfect so far but the code isn't the same for the 5005 Might have to custom program it for that one.

The ECM8000 is going to be used instead of the R-Shack meter I currently have for measurements, I was going to grab the Dayton mic but that's still on backorder. I'm also going to use the generic cal file for the 8000 for now and maybe get it calibrated by Cross-Spectrum, they are actually pretty local so it should be an easy thing if that's something I decide to do

Stay tuned for a few graphs, I might take some later tonight, I'll post them here and in the other thread I started. I'm also going to throw them up on the REW thread as well.

The downside to the update is that ALL of the panels I made are for 1" insulation, but of course, now that I'm asking around more, it looks like 2" would be MUCH better for reflection treatment and that's not going to be an easy task to modify my panels for thicker FG

SO upset I didn't make them deeper... we will have to see what my ears hear and how they like the sound I guess, and if so, I will find a way to change the panel dimensions..

Thanks a lot! The front does look nice, I agree

Well, I've been in a bit of a rut lately, I've watched a handful of movies but the sound is just not up to par yet

I know half of the reason is because I don't have any reflection panels hung yet, above comment will tell you why and two, I have bass issues to tame. A huge peak followed by a huge null at the rear row and just overall bad sounding bass, boomy and non-existent, at the same time.

Sigh...

I've been making post after post hoping for some help with the multiple issues I have and I feel that I'm either getting talked down on or just not getting my questions answered on topic... this is getting frustrating.

And to top it off, I'm not 100% happy with the picture on my AE4000. I feel that the picture is a bit washed out and lacks depth. Now don't get me wrong, I don't expect the picture of a top of the line LED TV, nor do I even want that, but it's definitely lacking in some areas. Do I get it professionally calibrated? Am I expecting too much? Should I be able to get optimal results with basic test pattern calibration? Sigh... again.

Also, I'm ready to order some OC703 for my acoustic panels and here's another dilema. I originally made my fabric panels to accept 1" fiberglass, after they're ALL built, I hear from multiple posters that 2" is MUCH better, geez! I feel like I can't win. Ok, so 2" it is, I'll try to work around that. Now, do I spend less money and order 2" panels as is or do I spend more and order twice as many 1" panels and make 2" panels out of them with a plastic sandwich in between? Will it be worth the extra money? Idk, like I said, ANOTHER issue that's holding me back

Let me just say, WTH?! I just want to cry becasue I spent so much time building this room and I feel like I'm never going to be happy and it's so hard to get the help I need.

Anyway, sorry for bringing the mood down, maybe some of you can help bring it back up for me

Haha, thanks for the comment on the car, she's a big PITA sometimes (including right now) but she's still a gem

I know builds take a while, longer than anticipated of course, but I just feel like everyone else gets theirs done fairly quickly and are incredibly happy with the results, but I don't feel that way. I feel like mine is taking longer than it reasonably should and on top of that, not happy with the results so far.

As far as tweaking the audio side of the build, I do have REW and a ECM8000 microphone and have taken many a measurements, just haven't posted them in here yet, too busy posting them in the REW forum and what not. My front row readings aren't that bad, just need to tame a few peaks. As far as the rear row goes, that's where I have a huge peak followed by en evenly huge dip, this will have to be corrected through bass trapping I assume, but what kind? My superchunks did squat to the rooms response so I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't have a lot of knowledge in this are so trial an error will be led blind.

Another thing I'm not used to yet with the IB build is how much ULF there is in movies, maybe when the system it finally tuned, it will be better but until then, almost every bass scene has bass that vibrates my clothes and gets quite obnoxious, sounds odd but true. Know what I mean?

As far as the wall panels go, I was lucky and found remnant pieces of 3" fiberglass at a shop in Worcester, most of the panels I grabbed were 3' x 4' in size and unfortunately a little damp in spots because the panels were all outside for a week or so, but the price was quite reasonable I must say, at $0.50 a piece

So, 3" panels on the walls and behind my screen it will be. Now I just need a new design for panels and their arrangement, goodbye to all my old panels that never got use, what a waste of time and money

Now for my PJ, I think I've come to terms with it and it's actually pretty good on the blacks after actually noticing what my Panasonic Plasma can do upstair, not much better I must say, worse if anything. I just need to get used to it downstairs now. But, the picture on the PJ could still use some tweaking, it still looks a bit washed out to me, which when fixed, I think it will make my blacks look better. I just need to find a certified calibrator now.

Thanks for the reply, let's keep this thread going!

Completely understandable, it's just that the rear seats are bery boomy with that peak, if I can tame that peak down a bit (10db or so), I will be happy with that and then I can just work on the front row


Ha ha, it is an odd "problem", but seriously though, it's a bit annoying! Trust me, I like "feeling" the bass but I don't want to feel itchy during every bass scene I feel like something is amiss because I've never heard of anyone having a problem with it, maybe I'm just weeeeird


I had one guy tell me that the superchunks did help with the ringing but I need to take more plots, before and after and see how much they actually helped.

I will try to do somethign with the current panels, maybe I CAN salvage them, but to be honest, I'm not sure that I even loved the panel design anyway once it was all put into place so I don't know what I'm going to do :/

And like I said with the Panny, if a good calibration will help with the slightly washed out look, I think I'll be more than happy with it's picture

Tonight I started trimming the 3" rigied fg panels I bought, into cleaner shapes. In case you didn't see my other post, I found some remnant rigid fiberglass panels at a fairly local company and picked through their piles for the best ones I could find. Some of them still had wet spots from sitting in the rain, but I got the driest ones I could find. So, now they need to be trimmed from the bad spots and uneven ends.

I have gone through half of them tonight and maybe I'll tackle the rest tomorrow or monday, and then start figuiring out how to incorporate them with my current wall panels, aye yi yi..

I posted this in it's own thread but hopefully this fiberglass isn't too dense.. I've never dealt with rigid fg before so I'm not good with guessing pcf numbers but this stuff has got to be at least 6pcf... if it's greater than 6pcf, am I in trouble or would that be ok?