Bullitt Home Theater - Page 3

I just hooked-up the 3D emitter to the JVC 55 and charged-up the Expand glasses. Put in the IMAX Space 3D BR. All I can say is wow. I was really expecting less than stellar results with the 55 because it wasn't as bright at the 5010 Epson I was looking at originally and the screen size. The 55 is having no problem with 3D brightness on the 16:9 area of the Carada screen. Basically a 120" Screen. The second scene has a glove hovering in front of you and you would swear you could reach out and put it on.

Posted pics of what's there now back on the 4/19 post. And yes, I am glued to the screen. I am very impressed with the hardware. The JVC 55 just works. We watched Deathly Hallows. Part 1 in 2d and part 2 in 3D Scope on Sunday using the Exceed 104 glasses. It was awesome. Don't know why everyone Poo-Poos 3D so much. It's fun. The JVC with the 136" Carada BW is plenty bright for 3D in my room and I was REALLY worried about that. Sitting 11ft from the screen there is no screen door effect either. It's very smooth. We're watching all the 2D scope stuff on Normal lamp mode with the iris at about half open and the contrast and color even amazes my highly critical wife.
We have Fusion 1019 seats on the way. Suppose to be here on Thursday so we won't have to sit on the floor anymore! Dealing with Roman, so far, has been fantastic. rtheaters.com
I still haven't drug Nautilus 800 speakers upstairs yet. Using my old B&W 640s with 602s for rear fill and my Velodyne sub. I'd forgotten how good those speakers are. Don't feel I'm missing a whole lot with them but I'm sure the 804s/HTM1 will be an improvement when I get to it. But yes, I am glued to the screen. It's great.

My Fusion Lagoon seats from Roman at rtheater.com are out for delivery to me today. We won't have to sit on pillows anymore!
I haven't seen the product yet but I must say the buying experience with Roman has been exceptional. VERY responsive both before and after the sale. Highly recommend him as a supplier.
Photos after installation this weekend. It may actually start looking like a HT in there, finally. But still much more to do...

The Lagoons arrived today. Lugged them upstairs and assembled them. They are NOT light! They are awesome. Watched Avitar with Crown and Coke + Popcorn. REALLY nice seats. Seem to be solid and well made. I'm very pleased with the construction, comfort and cost. I don't think there could be a better value out there.

Thanks and no, the LED thing isn't a problem. If it bothered me I would put something over it when viewing but I've not felt the need to even do that. You will love the seats. ALSO I posted I have the Lagoons, I actually was looking at the looking at the Lagoons and got the Escapes. Love them!

Up dates and PICTURES! See, I am listening to you guys on the picture thing...

We now have the Seats in, the B&Ws in and are REALLY enjoying the room. The latest upgrade is a DIY sub. It's a twin opposed 15" driver setup in a 24" Hardwood Ply Cube. Powered by a Crown 1000 and equalized by a Behringer Feedback Destroyer Pro. I am extremely impressed how the dual opposed sub manages both huge SPL in LFE from movies but is also able to handle music subtleties. We listen to everything from Rap to Jazz and this box seems to be unflappable. I expected it to handle high SPL stuff better than my trusty Velodyne but certainly not to handle music better. But it does. We are still not finished with what we want to do for the back row. Also going to have to tame the room reflections and install base traps to eliminate some peaks and valleys spread around the listening area. That's next on the TTD list. Even not totally completed we are loving it room and happy we checked that option on the house build list.

Yes, it is a good feeling, and we are very much enjoying the home HT experience. It's very addicting, as if that's some prolific realization on this site. Still really needs some sound treatment to get things right, but that will come soon.

Just added a pair of B&W DS3s for side surround duty. Moved the 602s to rear positions. Now officially into 7.1 mode using all B&W transducers. I'm very impressed with the addition of the DS3.

I'm already on board with that. I have a load of 703 right now. (15) 2" thick panels and (8) 4" panels. I've been using REW along with a Parts Express EMM-6 to get a grip on what the room is doing and get a baseline on the Waterfall Graph. I also have a BFD to get a baseline of the Waterfall to make some changes in the low end equalization and smooth out the sub some. That in itself made a huge difference. I'm going to wrestle with some acoustic tuning this weekend. Right now the video is off the charts as far as I'm concerned and the audio is definitely getting there. If I can't make a room full of B&W speakers sound good, I should just give it up, right? I'm really happy how the room is turning out.

OK, I've been living with the DS3s for a while now. I REALLY like them. I know it sounds stupid but it feels like 3D sound. Very realistic in both movies and TV. I actually catch myself starting to look over my shoulder sometimes.

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, Jeff's HT is simply awesome. I am really enjoying my Garage Ma Hall too. I now have the Bullitt and the Mach I here in Houston. I am currently gathering the parts to put my "left-over" T-Trim Vortech blower on my Wife's 2003 Mach I. That will be first major project in the new space. I do love my new digs.
Sounds to me like you're on the right track with your future set-up too. I'm interested to see how this turns out. Keep me in the loop, please.

After MUCH!!! listening, RTAing, and other sorts of time consuming analysis Wendy and I finally came-up with an acoustic treatment scheme for the HT. It turned out to be minimalistic actually. Less was more I had to admit after living with bare yellow 703 panels of varying thicknesses and sizes covering almost everything for a month or so, we found the pattern we just installed sounded the best. This included four full length traps in each corner. These are 4" 703 framed, covered with GOM and placed at a 45 in each corner. There is air behind them and they really, really work well. The only wall panels we used was on the back wall which was 2" framed and GOM covered. We tried panels everywhere and even in the spot of the first wall reflections and it seemed to deaden the room too much and suck a way a lot of the high end. It also didn't help imaging at all, which really wasn't a problem with the B&Ws to start with even in Stereo mode. I found that hard to believe that first reflection panels didn't help. That's like square one, as I understand it. Anyway, obligatory photos attached...







And finally, the back row of RTheater seats should arrive Wednesday. At that point, the room will be level one "finished". Time to play with the Mustang for a while. Getting Track Fever.

Thanks! As far as finished, note I said Level One "Finished". Hobbies are never finished. My race car, my RC Helicopters, My cycling and a couple others, are never finished. Constant upgrades. The HT I'm SURE will be the same way.

In the midst of my Mustang upgrades my college age daughter gave me a coffee cup with a picture of the car on it and on the back it said "Honest, after this I'm done..." Not funny.

The 4520 replaces my much loved but failing B&K AVR-317. I was skeptical that the new piece would sound as good, but I was hands-down wrong. It made a huge difference that everyone in the family has noticed. My B&W 804Ns just love it. I've also now eliminated the BFD for equalization. The Audyssey 32 did a better job. I was also considering a Marantz 7701 and the new 7 channel power amp but could tell no difference in the sound. For 2 grand less and the functionality of the much more expensive 8801 it made more sense to go with the Denon piece. If later I want a separate power amp I can certainly add it and use the Denon for a Pre. Maybe even just a high-end 2-channel separate for music. Plus the Denon has an 11 instead of only 7 channel Pre-amp capability of the 7701.. It has PLENTY of power to push my 804s (another concern going in) with just two channels but I intend to bi-amp them soon with the extra 2 channels left over on my 7.1 setup to see if there is some sound quality improvement there. So far, a Very Happy camper. Watched the Return of the Dark Knight movie last night with the family. Awesome! I'm an Audyssey fan now. That I can assure you.

Thanks for the comments. We REALLY love the house and just had the whole family here for the first Christmas at what my son now calls the "Texas Nexus".

The XT32 is pretty amazing. I don't know how much of the sound improvement is the processing or the hardware upgrade itself. All I know is, it works well. Very impressed from the detail and transparancy in the high end, to the improvement in the imaging and the bass extension and control. I spent a LOT of time learning REW and purchasing a BFD, calibrated mic, pre-amp, etc to tame just the sub itself with the old B&K. The XT32 handling the whole range of frequencies is doing a MUCH better job as testified by all witnesses so far. My wife can be extremely hard to please on sonics. Ears like a freaking bat. She gave me two thumbs up upon first hearing this, which is highly unusual. Normally it will take significant tweaking after a change to get it back to her discerning requirements of performance. I need to RTA it again now and see what the curve looks like. Very curious on that.

I find it amazing the XT32 isn't offered in the Marantz 7701 but is offered in units well down in the Denon and Onkyo lines. You have to go to the 8801 in Marantz to get it. It's supposedly higher-end equipment by the same company!

Also got another pair of posters for Christmas too. Laura Croft and Hallows. Also about a hundred BR movies which were well coordinated by my awesome wifer among relatives. My daughter evidently caught the $4 BR sale on Amazon and bought everything she thought I would like. Going to be a long time until I run out of software!

A really great A/V Christmas.

Oppo 103 ordered to replace the PS3. PS3 going into Game/BR duty on the 64" Sammy Plasma downstairs.