Desert Sunset Theater Build - Page 3

when doing the caulking I had a hologen work light in there - It got warm pretty fast. Starting on the double drywall tonight - should be fun.

Managed to get a few hours in and started on the drywall. Here is the obligatory Green Glue shot.

Measure twice cut once - Especially true when working with Green Glue - Got this piece up and realized I measured wrong and cut it 5 inches too big - Had to scrape off the Green glue and cut again. When all was said and done I ended up about an inch too short . It was the end of a wall so I will tuck the other wall behind this one and fill in the little gap with caulk.

While working in the theater I noticed how loud the pipes are when the toilet is flushed - I remembered that I had a few rolls of self adhesive rubber window flashing that I bought for my last house and never ended up using - the rolls are about 5-6 inches wide and when doubled up fit perfectly on the 4 inch drain pipes. It is pretty thin stuff so I'll probably need to put several layers up, but even with one layer it does make a bit of a difference.

I'll be putting in a bunch of fluffy fiberglass insulation. Right now my chamber is at about 8.5x Vas for the 4 drivers. I think with the insulation the chamber should simulate 10x Vas fairly well.

If Blueprint ever releases the 22" IB drivers I may put those in which would likely reduce that down to 5-6x vas. I wonder how much difference that would make.

I hear you - I'm sure you can speak to that better than I can. I've never heard an IB yet - But from what I understand it is a different sound that most are used to due to the lack of distortion and because of the lack of distortion some say they do not sound as loud to some people as a conventional sub.

I hope that you are right and I have no desire to upgrade - 4 18's is probably considered excessive by many, but this is the way I look at it. - I remember in the late 80's I went into a high end stereo store and they had the Infinity IRS Beta's - The IRS Betas were $70k if I recall correctly and this was a time when $5000 speakers were considered extremely high end. The IRS betas had two towers with 12 - 10 or 12 inch woofers in two towers and they went down to 16 hz. They played an organ note at 16 and it totally pressurized the room. I was amazed by those speakers.

Those Infinity drivers of that era probably had 8-10 mm of xmax if that - Now you can get the equivalent displacement with a few 15 inch drivers and just about everybody these days with a subwoofer has 16hz extension. The Infinity's seemed very excessive back then (and they were), but looking at them from today's perspective the output does not seem as impressive.

One other thing - each halving of frequency requires 4x the displacement for equal volume - Lets say hypothetically My speakers with dual 9" scanspeak woofers can output 110db at 40hz and have 1 liter of displacement - to have the same output as the mains at 20 hz - the sub would require 4 liters. 16 liters at 10 hz, 64 at 5 hz etc. (the 4 fi 18's have 29 liters of displacement) When you start to look at it like that maybe 4- 22's does not sound so crazy

I'm not interested in cranking out 130 db's at 20 hz. I really have no use for that - I want the subs to be able to play low and free of distortion and driving them well under their limits.




This is the Infinity system I was referring to (this was just a photo pulled off the web)

I've got the first layer of drywall up in the chamber and caulked all the seams - I'm going to have to put the ceiling in last this time because there is barely enough room to tilt a sheet of drywall in there now. I'm also going to have to pick up some more green glue - I wasn't planning on having green glue in between the drywall and the osb when I bought it.

I also bought several of the IB3 clips to attach the framing to the outside walls or the existing ceiling joists - I ended up not using them so the entire chamber room is free standing. Now that everything is tied together this thing has absolutely no give. I have to say this is the most overbuilt framing structure I have ever built.

Both layers of drywall up in the chamber. Glad to finally get this done - it was getting small in there. I managed to get everything up without getting green glue all over everything - until the very last piece - it was the piece covering the doorway to get in and I had to put green glue on the wall instead of the drywall. The drywall slid down as I was trying to screw it in and it ended up getting all over my tool belt and clothes - Then it ended up all over my drywall screw gun. Managed to get it off the gun with some goof off.

Where is infinity for that matter? - Back in the late 80's Infinity and even Polk made some good stuff. The speakers from that era are much better than what they put out today. In the late 80's (still high school for me), I dreamed of owning the Polk SRS-SDA 1.2's. I remember listening to these in the store and being amazed at the 3d image they provided.

I mud and taped the chamber - I figured I could have just used acoustic caulk, but thought the mud and tape would prevent any cracking at the seams. Since none of this would be seen, I did a quick job not worrying about a quality finish.

Last steps are to put in insulation, mount the manifolds and build the access door.

Not much progress the last few days but I did put a rounded edge on the manifolds and got the insides of the boxes painted.

I'm glad I have this thread as a journal of my progress - I was feeling like my progress has slowed and things were not moving along as quickly as they should - It feels like I have been at this for at least a few months.

I looked back and the first time I did anything to the theater was just over a month ago - The first nails went in just a bit less than a month ago. I guess with planning and the other parts of the basement It made it feel like I have been doing this longer than I have. It made me feel better about my progress to look back at the thread.

I did have to hitch up the wagon and make the trip to the big city in order to hear the Polks

Insulation in chamber finished. Very itchy when done. Hope I don't have to spend much time in here anymore.

It wasn't to bad at first, but toward the end it was like swimming in a fiberglass filled swimming pool.

I didn't think it through at first and started doing the walls first so the ceiling could rest on the insulation on the walls - I realized that doing that I wouldn't be able to get the ladder in there to put up the ceiling - So i had to remove some and put the ceiling in first. I was worried i was going to run out of insulation before I covered the chamber and was not looking forward to getting cleaned up and then having to go in there for a few small pieces - I ended up just making it with what I had.

I just used twine to hold the batts in place - I stapled twine to the bottom of the walls and wrapped it around the batts and stapled to the top.

Started building the panel to cover the access hatch in the chamber. Built it out of 2 layers of 3/4 MDF with Green Glue between. I didn't want to have to clean the applicator for such a small job so I put the Green Glue on with a cheap putty knife.



Handles installed.

Also ran the sub wiring