Making the "Bacon Race" Theater - Page 51

Yeah we used star drive on almost everything to keep the bit from slipping. Really helpful. (Plus BIG's cordless driver/drills are awesome) I think really you would add up the drywall + furring and add 1/2" to the screw length is a good rule of thumb for the channel.

Completely unrelated, the wife and I watched "Battleship" last night, which yes, I knew was a bad movie, but is a summer "popcorn" movie and should have been fun. The sound in this movie is incredible. The story is stupid, characters flat, yeah yeah... think of it like transformers, just an audio/visual treat. Some of the scenes like the plane flyover of the Missouri, ship w/ waves sounded literally like you were standing there. It was a very impressive audio track.

After 1 year by the way, the Sony projector still looks beautiful. I am so happy I got this projector. I'll be checking out Avengers/Prometheus at home in 3D soon, so see how the 3D brightness has held up over a year. I was worried about all of the bulb dimming I had read about in the past, but I personally haven't noticed any yet, although I am sure there has been some. It's nice to have a pitch black theater. Even with that 130" wide screen, it is still plenty bright a year after purchase. I couldn't have been happier. Also, I have noticed my audio is much better after getting my pre-amp and subs serviced. When I re-calibrated my Audyssey after getting my pre-amp back, it now asked me to tune my subs to 75db instead of 35db previously. And my subs after being tuned correctly show a much better range after getting fixed. So I was blasting Battleship yesterday and was smiling ear to ear seeing the visuals pop off the screen after a year running the projector, and the sound field completely emmersive and crisp. Going to really enjoy watching the Avengers later this week!
Edited by damelon - 9/24/12 at 7:13am

Satin

Haha! :P Next time I'll just use contact paper instead of paint!!

No beveling for either of the corner pieces. Keep in mind the rear panels were 2" thick, had 2" material in them, and then were mounted 2" away from the wall. (Totalling 4") So there was 4" of space on each side of them. The side panels continued like 3" or so past the back panels in the corners, but it appears like a joint.

So the wife and I have a lot of "future projects" lined up. One of which is finishing our rec room.

We plan to put a tile or concrete epoxy floor (they have some cool metallic ones now), Put a stone wall along the wall where the theater room is, finish the bar, add sconces, etc.

One thing I want to plan for is audio. The room has 2 ceiling speakers hooked up to the whole house audio. That's fine and all, except we don't want the music in the rest of the house to be the same as the music in the rec room. We would like a bit more bass and a different audio source. One thing my wife brought up is the ability to control the audio from the bar area. I was wondering what the ideal way for me to hook that up would be. My theater utility room is situated behind the bar, so I can put another amplifier on the rack for this room. I know I can run speaker wires to some nicer in-wall speakers or even to standard wall plates that I can hook up some speakers to. But what if I want to control the volume from that amp at the bar?

I was thinking the easiest thing (and cheapest) would be to run an IR-repeater to the bar area and just have the remote out there. And then some sort of wall-plate that I can use as an input source from a laptop or ipod dock. I know I could control a playlist via wifi on a laptop without cords but then I'd need some remote computer to act as the base-station for it. My HTPC wouldn't work since it is already connected to my other receiver. Just trying to figure out what the best way to get the audio to the receiver is going to be. Most laptops have HDMI but I don't need the video. I could do RCA but then i'd have to use the headphone jack. Thoughts?

I haven't looked at the Sonos system. I will do some research on it.

With the rest of our house, we do have a whole-house system and just use an XM-Radio terminal, which works fine. The volume isn't great though. With the rec-room, I want it much louder. Since it is a large space, and we have parties, I want it to be loud enough to be able to let people dance. That being said, I'd likely drive the whole thing with my music collection. I'm used to using things like Winamp through my laptop. That product has been around forever and it still is so easy to use. I'd probably shy away from Apple TV though. I like my ipod and all, but I hate iTunes.

Also, yes, my pre-amp does have Zone 2 capability, but I would need an additional amp to drive any more speakers. Not to mention, it would only support 2 more speakers total. I'd much rather get something separate. I also do have an old high end yamaha receiver I could use, though it doesn't have any HDMI inputs, it would be just fine to drive a ton of good powered speakers. It does have Optical/Coax inputs though.

So I started to look at SONOS stuff this morning.... Holy crap, you aren't kidding that it is expensive! If we didn't already have whole house audio, this would be something that I'd probably get. For one room though, the cost is kind of high. I really like the way it all hooks together, control from the phone/tablet is cool too.

Do I have to buy the "Bridge" or does my existing WiFi work? Seems to show that I don't have to have a bridge, like it's basically just a wireless access point. Or do I have to used the Wired mode on the spekaers if I don't have a bridge? Do I have to use a "Connect" at all, or only if I want to also hook up my theater at the same time to the sound on the Sonos system? I guess in that case it doesn't end up being very expensive. Just a couple of Sonos speakers.

I do have a pair of Paradigm Studio 100s which are sitting in my old HT in my rental house I could use, a Paradigm sub, and an old Yamaha receiver that I could use, which would be very loud.... the problem is that it is also very big. Not sure if I want to put those big bulky components in there or not. But whenever the word FREE comes into discussion, I have to consider it.