The Timelapse Theatre - Planning n' Build Log - Page 32

This weekend was a whole lot of fun. Friends came over on Friday night to have dinner and a movie but we wound up just tossing the kids down to the theatre with "Despicable Me" so the grownups could gossip and drink.

Nickshitachi drove up and brought all of his fancy analysis gear. We spent long hours on Saturday night measuring, listening, and tweaking settings to dial in the subwoofers and LCR array.

In case you missed it I was having a lot of trouble with my center channel... it sounded terrible. I replaced it with a full-range speaker that's identical to the left and right. I did this at the cost of going from 7.1 to 5.1 but I'll live.

Here are the before and after measurements that we did.

The room started out with a rather uneven response in the low frequency (as expected). You can see the room modes fairly clearly especially down there around 30Hz. You can also see the steep 20Hz rolloff that I installed due to the poor performance of these subwoofers below that frequency.

(Blue is the post-adjustment; purple is the pre-adjustment)



First we tweaked the "distance" parameter in the Meridian processor for the subwoofer channel to find the best performance and then we applied three or four PEQ adjustments by way of the Behringer 1000DSP amplifier used for the subs. Not bad considering there are no purpose-built bass traps in the room yet.

The important thing is that it sounds great!

Adjusting the subwoofer helped to smooth out response in the high end as well as you can see from this center-channel only graph. These graphs sure look bumpy but it really does sound exceptional in the room. Vocal clarity is excellent. You can see in this graph where the 120Hz rolloff down to the subwoofer takes place.



Now check THESE out. Look at the change in decay that has occured in the room since we first measured vs. now. The green waterfall is with nothing in the room except carpet... no Linacoustic, no furniture.



And this is what we measured this weekend (new carpet, 2" Linacoustic on screen wall, giant couch, giant ottoman, no other wall treatments)



Ideal? No. Better? Oh yeah!


Attention Defecit Version: The room sounde even better now thanks to tweaks and measurements after a visit from Nickshitachi!

Thanks for the compliments and all of your help. I am NOT very excited about turning those subwoofers on-end, however!

I was always planning to add some bass trapping but I didn't want to do it until the room was measured. The way I see it if you don't have data how would you know if you helped or hindered?

Hey, everybody! I just wanted to let you all know that I'm still alive and kicking! I appreciate the texts and facebook nudges asking about progress and my welfare!

It has been 3 weeks since Maker Faire:NC and I just wrapped up the last of my official business / obligations for 2012. 2013 planning starts soon though.

I have been busy every weekend with birthday parties, camping trips, cleaning house, working out of town, etc. etc. and it it feels like I haven't had a chance to breathe. I sat down on Sunday night and started playing with XBMC and I'm totally sold. I think I'm going to save up for a Mac Mini to install as a dedicated HTPC running XBMC.

So... theatre progress: none. Feel free to blame the projector hanging (hangs head in shame) but I have been seriously busy with life too.

I have the part 13 video footage in the can but I'm only just starting to edit it. I'll try to get that out some time this week. Theatre Status: functional but not "done". We've got a couch, we've got sound and video, we've got snacks.

My to do list (in no particular order):
1. build and wrap frames for screen wall
2. design and build rear wall decorative piece (see draft below)
3. build and wrap absorptive wall panels (Spoonflower-printed)
4. install bass trap behind screen
5. install molding between ceiling and soffit
6. drywall / cover up the hole where the heater used to be
7. paint closet door in rear
8. paint rear wall where decorative panels aren't going
9. replace carpet on stairs
10. reinstall bannister on stairs
11. finish painting stairwell
12. install sconce light in stairwell
13. fill with sand or replace door at top of stairs
14. replace exterior door to left of stage with solid door (no window)
15. design new air vents, cut, install on ceiling
16. design and print can-light inserts for soffits
17. touch-up drywall, paint
18. buy and install rear channel speakers (can I find a single DSP 5000 somewhere!?)
19. save for and install Meridian HDMI switcher and upgrade to lossless audio

Draft of the rear wall decorative CNC-cut MDF:

This is a 4 x 16' x .75" MDF carving that I'm going to do on the ShopBot CNC. Design will change but you get the idea. Not sure what color I'll paint it.

Do you mean my to-do list or my list of stuff that's kept me from doing said list? Either way they're both long!

Thanks! I wanted to vary the carving depth as the wave moved. We'll see...

OK, OK. I admit it. Progress has been halted because I hung the projector. We are down there almost every night thoroughly enjoying the room! I know that I owe you guys a new video and some pics of the painted and furnished room. I'm going to try to knock that out RealSoonNow.

I did somehow manage to find time to assemble a kick-ass XBMC Home Theatre PC! I've had AppleTV served by iTunes all around the house for a while but I really wanted to stream uncompressed Blu-ray rips and experiment with a new user interface.

The XBMC user interface is very good. I am amazed at the power of the software. You can install scripts and plugins to do all sorts of things. I installed plugins for browsing all kinds of free streaming networks (ABC, Hulu, HGTV, ESPN, DIY Network, &c. &c.).

For hardware I took the cheater's way out. I bought a base Mac Mini and upgraded the RAM to 8GB from the standard 2GB. I added two 3TB external hard drives for local storage rather than installing a NAS. I currently have about 350 of my personal DVD rips, a half dozen of my personal Blu-ray rips, and about two dozen TV shows ripped from my DVDs on there. And yes, I own all the original discs! :-p

If you haven't tried XBMC I highly suggest checking it out.

That's a great question. I was very concerned about control and it turns out that it's very capable. Out of the box XBMC will respond to an

1. Apple remote (U,D,L,R,select,menu,play/pause)
2. Keyboard
3. HTTP (it has a built-in web page but also will accept HTTP commands via Crestron, AMX, iPhone apps, etc.).

Currently I'm controlling the XBMC using an iPhone app called HippoRemote and a simple Apple bluetooth keyboard.

I'm integrating a module to control the XBMC via HTTP through my Crestron system. That has lots of advantages because I'll be able to have direct access: browse titles, see cover art, etc. live on the touchpanel instead of monkeying with up,down,left,right, etc. commands.

XBMC wasn't very hard to configure once you wrap your mind around how it wants to work. I used Apple TV for years with a Mac running iTunes 24/7. That has disadvantages like the lack of file format support (no uncompressed Blu-ray rips, etc.) and, frankly, I don't like the user interface as much as the XBMC.

Good question. I'll explain for everyone's benefit too.

XBMC is free software that can run one of a couple ways:

• Just like any other program on a suitable computer (supports Windows, MacOS, and Linux)
• XBMCbuntu on a suitable computer

XBMCbuntu is an all-in-one solution that can install on inexpensive hardware and it just works out of the box. This includes the operating system and XBMC.

I chose to run Mac OS X on my Mac Mini but set it up so that XBMC is started automatically. There's really no reason why anyone in the family would ever have to know that XBMC isn't just an appliance instead of what it actually is (a program running on a computer). I like being able to have a full computer down there so I can do other things (web browse, Netflix, Pandora, etc.) that XBMC can't currently do.

Sure, no problem. Hopefully it will be useful for you. I'm learning a lot about the control side of things.

I'm using MKV containers generated by MakeMKV on the Mac. I like the "one-file" approach. I could compress them through Handbrake but I don't like what it does to the picture quality.

I've heard great things about Savant although I don't have first-hand experience. When I said HTTP control I really meant IP control. I'm pretty sure that the control uses TCP (might be UDP not sure) so, for Crestron, you can just use a native socket in Simpl+ or a TCP server object in Simpl Windows.

I know there are huge fans of the Popcorn Hour out there. Again, I don't have first-hand experience but I remember that there were a couple deal-killers for me. The user base of XBMC is huge and it's a mature product with lots support available. No matter which system you go with you still need to work within its constraints (file types, file hierarchy, naming conventions, etc.). I found that XBMC was the most flexible so it won.

Thanks for the compliment!

It seems like you can't put enough coats of black on the ceiling! I gave up after 2.5 (when I ran out of paint)! Looks fine. Everyone that comes in there just sees the giant screen though so it doesn't matter too much!

I actually worked on the theatre yesterday!

I went out to TechShop and built five frames to surround my screen and rack. I used the same 1.5" finger-jointed primed pine that I used to build the screen and screen wall. I'll post some pictures later.

I LOVE the Kreg jig! Someone at the shop asked me why I didn't do half-lap scarf joints instead of pocket screws... I was like - {blink} {blink} - "because I wanted them done today?!