235 Build - Page 9

I used FR701 in front of my surrounds and think they sound great. A true speaker fabric would have been more AT, but I wanted the panels that covered my speakers to look just like all the other panels in the room.

On your front wall, will you have speakers behind the fabric or are they behind your screen? If they are behind the fabric, FR701 is probably the best choice. If your speakers are behind an AT screen, it's not critical that the black fabric be AT, so you might look at black velvet. I used it on my wall to match the screen frame because I wanted the front wall to be as black as possible. It's cheaper than FR701 too.

Speaker fabric will definitely have a different look than FR701. Many samples I received that were called "black" were actually gray, so I would suggest getting some free samples before making a decision. One fabric I did find that is very similar to FR701 is the Designer Series from Acoustex Fabrics. To me, it seemed to be a bit more acoustically transparent. It just seemed to be a little easier to blow through. It has the same texture as FR701. You might want to get a sample of their black.

I've never used the plastic track before, so I'm not sure how well it works with a thicker velvet. My guess is it would be fine, but you might want to ask Fabricmate. The Syfabrics velvet isn't real heavy, so I think you would be ok. I don't think you'll find a better material for your front wall as long as your speakers are behind the screen. There's a reason they use it on the screen frames.

If you use speaker fabric, I wouldn't use the stuff from parts express - it is dark purple. The black speaker cloth from Rose Brand is much better IMHO (I used it on my column faces in front of surround speakers).

Deep Purple doesn't sound so bad...

No, I haven't seen any specs for it, but it is after all speaker cloth, so designed to be used in front of speakers (vs. other fabrics where its a bit of a guess without specs).

Here's the parts-express speaker cloth compared to Rose Brand by the way - this was over a year ago, its possible things have changed (I noticed in the parts express flyer today that the claimed their speaker cloth was "the blackest black", so maybe they fixed the purple issue?) - PE on the left, Rose Brand on the right:

More fun stuff! I may have missed it, but what is the target date for your construction to officially start. With all the detailed planning you have put into this build, I expect the entire project to be completed in about 2 weeks once you get started .

Touche`. I just like trying to share the missed extended deadline disease.

My HD did not carry 5/4" fjp so I used the 1" fjp stock (3/4" actual) and it worked fine.

Looks like you spilled the sand outside the stage...

Can you describe what you've worked out?

What I understand to be the issue with the mortise type is that you have to remove door thickness to install it which weakens your sound transmission prevention. May be a small area but I listened to Ted on this one and got the surface mount version.

I asked Mike Garrett this same question when I was getting ready to mount my JVC. He said that while the JVC can sit above the screen, the Panny 8000 must sit within the image area.

235,

I hate sounding like a nit-picking bastard because it looks like you have the makings of an awesome theater system goin' on... but...

Since you are doing an AT screen... you really should use the exact same vertically aligned tower for your center as your left and right fronts. Horizontal center speakers are a design and sonic compromise in order to place the center above or below a normal TV. Look at any commercial theater or mixing studio and they use identical, vertically aligned L/C/R's for a reason (dispersal patterns, for one). I'd call up Ascend and ask them to swap out your current center for a single, matching Sierra tower. Since this is what you're using it for, I doubt they'd raise a stink. They want your continued business, I would assume.

As for your speakers and their locations... I would look closely at the white papers put out by Dolby Labs on their website describing their object-oriented Atmos system (it's similar to DTS's MDA format). Yes, you guessed it... there is a new and more enveloping (and exciting) way of mixing and encoding soundtracks and it's just around the corner (for consumer use). Might as well consider the near future before everything is locked in stone and you have to rip stuff apart. Each speaker is classified as a "channel"... these formats are not confined to traditional channel amounts and are completely scalable from 2 to 9 to 11 to 22 to... (you get my point).

http://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Assets/US/Doc/Professional/Dolby-Atmos-Cinema-Technical-Guidelines.pdf

For one, it might behoove you to have at least one pair of side surrounds for each row... or have the wiring in place to add some more HTM-200 SE's in those locations. As for the off-screen wide surrounds, you would more than likely place them between the front row side surrounds and the behind-the-screen L/R's. Heck, if you have room for two more frontal side speaker locations to make things more uniform in your side wall speaker placement... I'd place speaker cable there as well. Wouldn't hurt.

I would also drop another set of speaker cables behind the screen because there are optional left center and right center screen speakers with these formats. Those would have to be yet another pair of Sierra towers to maintain complete timbre matching. Too bad they don't have timbre matching Sierra surrounds or small, sealed Sierra monitors with bracket mounts to be used as surrounds so all your speakers could have matched.

The wall mounted surrounds (sides and rear) should also be aimed in accordance to Atmos recommendations.

Then consider putting speaker cable in the ceiling for left/right overhead speakers. You probably would want to consider at least two pairs of HTM-200's on angled brackets and safety cabling (don't want them dropping on your guests!), so you can position them in accordance with object-oriented speaker aiming requirements.

At least the wires would be in place... it's cheap peace of mind. The white papers lay out the recommended placements... just don't have to put in 64 speakers... if you don't want to!!

All speakers must be wired separately because they are all addressed separately (again, consider each speaker a channel) by the object rendering decoder. Because surround effects can be full frequency under Atmos and MDA specs., there may be surround subwoofer outputs. Be sure to place subwoofer cabling in the left/right rear of the room just in case.

Even though it's not out yet, you could still wire up most of the speakers for DTS Neo:X post processing for the time being. You're extra efforts won't go to waste.

Just thought you should know.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 3/3/13 at 8:43pm

Have not checked in for a while. Looks like you have some nice new toys to keep you busy. I just read the above post and shed a little tear. I know I'm living in dream land,(that my stuff is good enough) but I'm crying with all the latest and greatest things coming out. 4k, Atmos targeted sound, front, side, around, sideways, diagonal, and backwards sound now coming out. Maybe you should hold off just a little longer and wait to see if they come out with a smell around system.

Dan might have a point on the Ascends, since you are going AT there is not any reason why you could not go with three towers across the front. If you keep it the way it is, you won't be disappointed they are fantastic speakers. Ascend has done all it can to make the center just as good as it can be. I do not notice any issues or differences in my towers or center, they are seamless in their panning and transition.

Looking forward to seeing some contractor progress pics.

Regards,

RTROSE
Edited by RTROSE - 3/3/13 at 8:17pm

Yes, they actually did try Smell-O-Vision years ago. Didn't go over too well. However, due to the ability to place sound in a more 3D x-y-z space, its completely scalable nature, the ease of mixing and rendering (almost like playing a video game), and the ability to down-convert the object mix to a channel-based format, object-oriented soundtracks are taking the movie industry by storm. It just rolled out in 2012 and 24 movies already are mixed this way... with a lot more coming. Just a matter of getting the mixing software into the hands of the post houses.

In it's most extreme use, 3D audio mixing can make it seem like individual objects are flying towards you, around you, above you, behind you... the theater walls start to disappear rather than hearing a bunch of speaker locations. Each sound can be tagged with metadata and steered anywhere in the room via the rendering software and the decoder at the other end.

Good thing 235 didn't use dipole surrounds. That kind of speaker design can "confuse" and muddy up these sound mixes. Diffuse and direct sound cues are in the mix.