Omaha Theater #5 - Page 8

That was my guess too so that is how I initially wired them up. If it turns out they need to be set the same I can easily change them up until the columns are in place.

The Emotiva side surrounds were very easy to hang. I've never owned any products from that company before, they seem really well built and seem like they were packed with a lot of care.

I built a couple of little shelves for the rears out of some scrap wood, then lag screwed them to the walls. There is a layer of plywood under the drywall to provide a solid mounting surface. Those speakers are not light, they look a little precarious sitting on the tiny shelves, I think that I'll add some velcro to the base before I put up the columns.

I tested them out last night and everything works! Nothing is calibrated yet. I had to go through quite a bit of material to find some that were 7.1, I was surprised how little is actually encoded with 7.1.

Thanks for that link!

I got started on the columns, I'm trying hard to duplicate the look of Brad's columns. All I really have to go off of is a couple of tiny screenshots that I printed out from Brad's thread.



I test fitted the first and it fits very well, but after I started looking at it and thinking about how I will wrap the fabric, I think I must have made some mistakes with the front cross pieces. The way they sit now, flush to the front, seems like it is going to keep me from being able to wrap the sides with the vinyl. I'm going to have to do some more looking at the pictures of Brad's theater.

Awesome, thank you Brad. I basically re-read your entire thread again this morning and have some more of your column close-ups printed out so I can work on reconfiguring my test column tonight. Luckily I used no glue when putting it together last night, just one screw in each 2x2 so it should be simple to remove the cross pieces and move things around.

I like your close-up showing how you stretched and stapled the vinyl, things make more sense now that I spent some time reviewing the pictures. Like the way you stapled the vinyl on the face of the frame at the back, but then you wrapped it around at the front and stapled on the inside. The back should get covered by the 1" deep wall frames so you'll never see those staples when the room is done.

rather than trim the vinyl flush at the top and bottom like you did, I am going to leave a little amount to wrap around and staple.

Only other question I should ask you Brad is that it looks like you went with 3 or 4 smaller black frames that meet together in the front. What were your thoughts on that, did you do any measurements to make things fit together at the same level across the room, accounting for riser height differences and that kind of thing? Or is it all so dark that the seams blend together and you wouldn't see them anyway?

Column 1.1, finished. Looking a lot closer to Brad's but not as pretty. I added the electric box in, each will have an outlet on the side.



I started measuring for the second pair of columns, these are up on the riser and will cover the side surrounds. Since the surrounds are di-pole I'll have to come up with a speaker cloth type window pane or some other solution for the sides of the column facing the tweeters.

Also ran into a definite issue, my HVAC supply and returns are too close to where the columns line up at the tops! BIG




Frustrating. I came up with a few options, none of them great. I have some flexibility to move the surrounds back a bit, but the bigger issue is that there is a sconce on either side of the column and the column is (was) centered in between them. If I move the column back much in order to clear the air vents, it is going to throw off the centering between the lights.

Re: HVAC, that is an option but not one I want to pursue if I can help it. With the HVAC already running through dead vents, muffler boxes and flexduct the last thing I need is even more restricted air flow and return.

Brad your original columns were about 18" wide, the ones that I built so far are 17.5" wide, the SHO-10 speakers in the back are just under 12" wide, I have to measure the width of the Emotiva ERD-1 Surrounds but I'm hoping they are also 12" wide. If that is the case I'm thinking I can rebuild the columns to shrink the width to 15" wide which would just cover the surrounds. That would let me shift the whole thing back a bit without it looking way out of symmetry with the sconce lighting.

You guys are comedians! That is my wifes car.

She and her friends did get a good laugh when I started getting all of the rolls and bolts of fabric, velvet, vinyl and batting for the theater room.

The flex is sitting in the soffits.






It might be possible to open a new hole farther back in the soffit and cut the flex back but man what a nightmare it would be to try and go that route. Yeah this is a passion project but I don't think I'm that passionate. I showed my wife the issue last night and how that set of columns would now be off centered and she didn't think it was worth worrying about.

The boots are nailed into the 2x4 cross pieces that you can just barely see in the photo above. I think I'm going with DesertDome's idea to rotate them 90 degrees. I called Emotiva and spoke to one of their tech guys, he said that wouldn't hurt things a bit. I built two more of the columns and these have 12 inches clearance on the inside.

Built the last two columns today and got the first two cut down to the new narrower width. Woolly stopped by to check things out and to hear the Danley for the first time.

Started cutting the vinyl for the columns and the first one is stapled on and looks decent.

I didn't, you can see in the picture below that the speakers have been rotated and don't have the tweeters facing front and back now. Not ideal but it cut the width way down and was a good solution from Desertdome. It also will drive me toward buying the last two SHO-10's and having 7 matching speakers.

The projector is up, that gave me the room to try some different positioning of the back row of chairs. I cut up some 2x4 blocks and put them under one chair to see if raising it up 1 1/2" helped any. It seems like a good improvement but I need to get someone else in there sitting in front of me and then I'll try reclining. If it works I'll probably paint a pair of 2x6's black and screw them down as rails then set the whole back row on top of them.



I bought one of these today:



plugs into my router and turns computer signals to IR, I've got an HP touchpad with android loaded onto it, I should be able to put some remote control apps on that then use it to control all the gear inside the equipment closet.

The baseboard and chair rail are painted and installed, today I'm starting on the frames. I think I'll do the inserts for the columns first, they are smaller and should give me a chance to perfect my technique without wasting too much material, then I can work on the larger wall panels.





Woolly stopped by to help me out this morning. I've been getting some screen vibration on the deeper bass notes, which I thought was due to air movement through the screen from the dts-10 sub. I posted some questions in the dts-10 thread about this but the folks there thought that it wouldn't be from air movement but instead from floor and screen wall vibration. I thought I had built the stage very solidly with all that sand, but these guys all own dts-10's so they have more experience here than I do. To correct any shaking I ordered some auralex pads to place under the subs, Woolly helped me disassemble the screen wall and hoist the speaker up onto the pads, then we put everything back together. When we watched Tron Legacy the deeper bass pulses still shake the screen. Looks like my original guess was correct after all and it is air movement through the screen.

First row is up going across the room:




I built a hinged door to get at the thermostat controls hidden inside the first column:



And this is a dragonfly that kept buzzing my head as I was building the panels today:

Thanks guys. Making and hanging these panels has been the most fun part of building the theater, nothing else comes close. Each panel that goes up makes the room look more finished and adds some color. I've got all 6 columns done, 3 panels per column. The blue bottom layer is done and today I started on the grey upper level.




Last night I ran audyssey for the first time, it really improved the surrounds but it also killed the sub. If I leave it as is I could have skipped buying a Danley and I could have gone with a sound bar or home theater in a box. I asked Desertdome about it, he gave me some ideas to try out.