My 9.1 Living Room/HT setup

I live in a 1 bedroom apartment, I built this HT which is the closest I can get to a theater experience without annoying the neighbors. My goal has been to make a room that is enjoyable at low-medium volumes. It will never be played at reference volume.

Equipment List as of Sept/2011

Display: Samsung PN50C7000 3D 1080p

Receiver: Onkyo NR-TX3008 w/2 130mm fans

Speakers: Energy RC-10's for fronts and front wide, Energy RC-LCR center, Energy RC-R for surrounds, Energy V-Mini's front height

Subwoofer: Energy ESW-CS8 (RC-Micro sub)

EQ & Acoustic Treatments: 10 24x48x2 ATS Acoustic Panels in Chocolate Microsuede, 2 24x24x2 ATS Acoustic panels in Shell Microsuede, Aurelex Subdude, Sound absorbing blackout curtains.

Media Players: PS3 Slim, Popcorn Hour A-210 w/6.5TB storage

Gaming: Xbox 360

TV Stand: Techcraft 48" "Rolo"

Remote: Harmony One by Logitech

Lighting:6500k desk lamp Bias lighting (to be replaced by Ideal Lume this month). Ikea Dioders for Panel backlighting.



DAYTIME View

You have good eyes! Yes this is connected to my kitchen and my dinner table is just outside the HT area. That is a Subdude, it was definitely worth the purchase I had 3 of them but sold the other 2 after I got rid of my tower speakers.

The panels are all from http://www.atsacoustics.com they ship to Canada and come in all sorts of colors, sizes and fabrics. It came to about $1000 for the panels $300 of which was shipping. I did 2 separate orders which adds higher shipping fees you can save a lot of money by ordering stock colors and getting everything in one shipment. Their site mentions a Canadian warehouse if so that would save a ton on cross border shipping.

The towers (RC-70's) were great sounding but I had a lot of problems with excessive bass at even the lowest volumes. Since selling them I upgraded from a 2EQ to a MultiEQ XT32 receiver and added the room treatments so I could probably use towers again but they would be wasted in an apartment. I do a lot of late night listening and my current configuration allows me more flexibility at different volume levels.

Upgraded TV to Panasonic VT30 65 inch model.

It's been a while since I haven't had them but from what I remember there were echos and lots of reverb in the room, the reflections muddied the sound up quite a bit. The room is quite dead sounding now which you often hear in a negative manner but that's actually good. The only bad thing I've noticed is my bipole speakers don't project sound as well behind the listener due to all the panels soaking up those reflections. Small price to pay. I could still use bass traps the panels don't really affect LFE but as you can see the sub isn't exactly gigantic.

I got the curtains at sears not sure of the name should be easy to find, behind them are blackout acoustic curtains from bed bath and beyond.

June/July '12
-Removed RC-10's and RC-LCR.
-Added Energy Veritas V51's and V52 Center all in Rosenut.
-Added Cherry Sanus center speaker stand.
-Ikea led strip lighting added to back of tv for bias lighting.










Edited by OmegaR3D - 7/2/12 at 5:50am

That's an Auralex Subdude, there's a bit of debate about how much they prevent bass from being heard by the neighbors but when I was on the 2nd floor I felt it helped cut vibrations drastically. They're pretty cheap so it couldn't hurt to use one for your sub. I used to have them under my towers too if they have decent LFE output.

Heights don't stick out that much but there are different levels of output in the Dolby receiver menus so you can have them blend in seamlessly or more pronounced I have them at medium so most of the time I don't hear them unless there's rain or an airplane flyby.