I built an acoustically transparent screen

I had been thinking I needed to make my theater room a bit larger. It is a 13 by 16 bonus room. When we built our home the wife and I planned this as the theater room. Over the last 13 years it has gone through a lot of changes. I have had four projectors in the room. I have tried out four different types of screens. The first was a Sony LCD. Next came a Barco CRT I bought used. Then came a Infocus 4805. Then I found a buy on a Mitsubishi 3800. Each new projector was a time to put in a new screen. The sony had a 103 inch 4:3. The Barco used the same screen for awhile. I did experiment with a silvered curved screen for the Barco but it didn't really work out for me. When I got the Infocus I painted a new screen. Most of my screens had been painted directly on the wall with various types of popular one color options from Home Depot or Lowes. I personally don't want to take the time to do the mixing and stuff for some of the popular mixes. Brilliant White or Silvercreen was a fast way for me to get things done on my busy weekends. I went from on wall screens, to parkland plastic screens floating off the wall with no boarders. I did like the floating screen a lot.

Anyway back to the desire for a larger theater room. Now I could not rebuild the room. I did have a pair of Paradigm 9 SE Mk II that had been used all these years. I knew that if I ever changed them it would be to a smaller pair so I could maybe hang the speakers on the wall. So one day I had just had it with the towers. I figured if I am going to go the route of on wall speakers, I may as well try out a acoustically transparent screen.

I went to Joanne Fabrics after finding on this forum about White Ponte fabric. I went shopping and bought the fabric and 1x3s from Home Depot. I pre-cut the wood in the garage and assembled and stapled the frame in the theater room. The stapling went well. No wrinkles and the frame is pretty strong. I used the wrapped felt around the frame idea and it looks pretty good.

I did it all on Sunday over the Memorial Day weekend. I filled up the day with the project. I took my time and did the cutting and assembly with grand children looking on. They were fascinated with the project. Especially when I was ironing the center fold out of the ponte while it laid on the floor.

I ended up with a 100 inch screen. I used the same hanging method I used for the floating screen which was a 93 inch screen. The screen hanging idea was perfect for this new project. Two 2x4s mounted on the wall to use a french hanger idea to susped the screen. The 2x4 was a perfect spacing for the on wall speakers behind the screen.

So what speakers am I using behind the screen? Now is when you all get to laugh at me. I mean if you have not been laughing enough about using Paradigms for the last 13-14 years you will be rolling on the floor with this. I had bought a pair of Minimus 77s for my computer speakers at a pawn shop. I loved them. As old as I am (61) I remember the Minimus speakers being a really great sounding speaker for really cheap. I used them decades ago for my audio needs and I am very familiar with them. Yes there had been better in their day, and is now, but for the price and what can be done with them they are fantastic speakers. I bought another pair when they once again showed up on the shelf at the pawn shop. So now I have enough, and a spare for the front. I put the speakers on the wall behind my new screen and I am really loving the results.

I had found with my Paradigm CC-350 I was having trouble hearing the dialog. I knew I had some hearing loss from my lumber mill days. I would get the TO LOUD complaint from the wife and would turn things down and then I couldn't really make out the dialog. So now I have a Minimus speaker doing dialog service and guess what. I can hear the dialog clearer now than I have EVER heard it in my theater room. I can turn it down to where my wife says it isn't loud enough and I can still hear every word clearly. Who knew. I guess I have something I may need to look into fixing with the Paradigms or my ears just can hear better with the Minimus speakers.

I like the white ponte as a acoustically transparent screen. I have re-adjusted all the levels for my 7.1 system and I am really liking the sound of my new theater. The pans are much nicer and smoother from back to front or front to back. I also like the front panning better. Yes, having a speaker behind the screen does make the front stage more relative to the screen action. I could aways hear the disconnect of mouth moving and speaker below the screen effect. Now that is gone, and with it came smother pans throughout the room. I like it.

As to what are my surround speakers. They are Paradigm in wall speakers. They were chosen to allow surrounds without taking up more room in an already small theater room. They seem to work fine with the minimus 77 front stage. I have not been able to hear any timbre change during the pans around the room. The sound just moves from one place to another without calling out the change in timbre at all. Lucky I guess. It may also help that the Minimus and the paradigm side surround speakers have a silk dome tweeter. I prefer the sound of the silks over metal domes. The speaker levels were actually easier to adjust with this new setup. My seating is 10 feet from the screen. My rear speakers are 6 feet behind me. The side surrounds are set a bit behind the couch on the side. It is a pretty nice layout overall. The front L/R pair are now not as wide as they were but I am ok with it so far. I could bring the L/R speakers from behind the screen if I need to widen the stereo front stage if I needed to.

My sub was originally built into the front right wall during the home framing. The sub plays out of a heating vent built into the wall below the down firing sub. It is a ported 12 inch JBL auto speaker which is tuned to 22 hz. It plays pretty loud and is pretty darn clean. I had built it myself and the framers that built the house were pretty interested in my project while they were working. Later I added a second sub to the back left of the room by making a snack table next to the seating that doubles as a sub enclosure. It is also a ported JBL which is a twin of the front subwoofer. I don't lack bass in the room at all, and the integration with the fronts is working very well.

I don't really see a major difference in screen image. Sharpness is still great. Without a chance for A/B comparison I am happy with the new setup. So if you have been considering it. I suggest you try it. So now I have reached my goal of a bigger room. The towers in the front are now gone as is the center channel. I have an extra 2 feet of space in the front. The grandkids now have more room to lay on the floor and watch a film on movie nights at Nana and Papa's.

This is my first attempt to load attachments into my post so here goes.

Photo with the window to the left shows the challenge I have with a small window in my theater room. I installed it to get some cool air into the upstairs room.

The photo with the OSB plug is my attempt at seeing if I can get the light to not come through the screen. I will continue working on this project.

The speaker shot is the Minimus 77 wall mounted behind the screen. Some scoff at such a speaker being used but I like it and recommend it.

To the lower right of the screen is a heat and AC vent. This vent allows the sub cabinet that is built into the wall to speak into the room. There was room between the front wall of the theater room, and exterior wall to build the cabinet. A ported JBL car speaker tuned to 22 hz is doing the honors. I chose a car speaker knowing that it could get hot in the attic area behind the screen and thought the car speaker could take the heat better. I am very happy with the bass.

I appreciate the input. I have posted a few more photos to help people see what I have done over the years to improve the room.

The sound panels on the wall were placed there about a year ago to help with dialog. The original dream of the system was to have a fabric wall but I went to this idea. The wife was so opposed to an all fabric wall. So I tempered that idea.

Like I had said before I was having a hard time hearing properly. The room is not active enough to really hear any slap echo. I just thought I would try to tame the last of whatever audio bouncing might be occurring. The panels were made by attaching a plywood back with a 1x3 or 1x4 I layered in some quilt batting and then stapled the blue fabric over doing the ruffles to just make things look nice. My wife thought I had lost my mind, but in the end felt it did help with the sound. Even she could hear the dialog better. Still, it wasn't perfect which led to this project.

I had experimented with the Minimus speakers during watching a film and discovered the improvement in understanding dialog. Wow, I had discovered a set of speakers that I enjoyed more than my Paradigms. With this I now had a small set of speakers that would fit onto a wall, and a screen could be placed in front of them. I got to work and built the screen.

The pillows in the front under the screen were part of past effort to dial down any last bouncing the audio might be up to. They look ok too. The basket is my version of a bass trap. The basket is stuffed with quilts and pillows. I did need these items in the room and the basket is used as a trap and storage for whatever people might want to grab to be comfortable during a movie.

The box under the center of the screen held my Paradigm CC-350 center channel. Even though it is now out of the system I still have left the box there. It also is stuffed with pillows.

The side surrounds are Paradigm in walls. You can see the old Paradigm 9SEmkII. My son is expressing interest in those. He is still using Paradigm 3SE I had given to him. He has a new son that is using them to climb up to a standing position. Being on stands the speakers have fallen onto my grandson. You can imagine the problem that causes. We will put the towers in his system to help with the stability and not have speakers toppling onto the child.

The photo of the seating also shows the Mitsubishi 3800 projector. I got a really nice deal on it two years ago. Shown also is the two rear back speakers. I know they could be spread apart a bit more but as you see the wall is pretty limited between the stair well and bathroom door. I did what I could.

For all surround speakers I created a enclosure in the wall just as Paradigm had suggested for their in wall speakers. The back surrounds took some imagination to get the size of enclosure they needed because the wall also included plumbing for water and a return air duct to the far left of the wall.

I managed to get the enclosure in and on many of the 7.1 films it really allowed the audio mix to show off a bit. Real Steel comes to mind. Hugo is another that really made the back surrounds show off. I was glad I had put these speakers in now that there are more 7.1 films being released on Blue-ray.

My AVR is pretty old. It is a HK 525. I use it as a pre-amp feeding into a HK 2.1 power amp for the front and side surround channel work. I have a Hafler DH-200 I had assembled decades ago on my kitchen table pushed into back surround service. For the sub channel work I am presently using a Kenwood KM 106. It all seems to work to my satisfaction. I may get a higher power sub amp eventually.

The HK 525 also has 6 and 8 channel inputs. To feed those I am using a Panasonic BD80 with a built in Dolby HD and DTS MA decoders. I am so looking forward to the release of films onto Blueray with 7.1 audio. We have taken to not going out to the theaters this last several years. I don't allow any texting in my theater. The bouncing/distracting lights from phones really make me angry. The bouncing lights is one of the reasons I don't go out to films. Plus I have this great room!

I had looked into getting new audio gear, but frankly the reviews I was reading here and other places led me to keeping what I have. I just could not justify the expense of new audio gear when what I have is working with just as good or better sound quality than I would get from gear produced today. Plus I don't have the problems I read about in some of the newer gear. I may not have HDMI switching, but I also don't have all the problems that go with it. The HDMI goes from the Blueray player directly to the projector. No hiccups.

So I hope this write up can help others. I enjoy the hobby and I hope others can benefit from my project. If you are thinking of using older equipment I hope to have demonstrated it can be done. Pawn shops and buying second hand has gotten me a lot of good gear for a lot less. When I update my HK 525 it will very likely be from a pawn shop. If you want to buy new, go for it. I just don't have a big budget for this stuff, but I have found a way to do it with gear I have collected during my past. I personally feel that there isn't light years improvements in sound with newer gear. In some respects the gear I have can be argued to have same or better quality. I do keep up with what is there now in case I need to suddenly go shopping. We all know electronics just one day can just let the magic smoke out.

The various screens I have made for my projectors has been fun to do. This last one I hope can serve me well. I can say it was worth doing and has shown me that the claim of raising the enjoyment of watching movies with an acoustically transparent screen is true. I know this kind of thing isn't for everyone but if you want do it, I say get off the fence, go for it.

Ok, I will practice screen shots and see about posting. We watched Man On A Ledge last night and I was surprised at how busy the film was audio wise. There were a lot of front stage mixing that had dialog coming from more than just the center channel. The mixers did a great job on front staging. Also some great surround mix during the film. I did enjoy the film overall. Better than I was expecting for story line, and sound mix.

Ok, here are some screen shots. Various shots show crowd so that you get a general idea of the image. A scene for the grey tones of the screen. A shot for highlight with dramatic shadows. Another shot oddly lit. Finally a shot for black levels. I have not critically adjusted the Mitsubishi to this screen yet but the results so far are pretty good.

By the way, while reading other posts for AT screens I keep running across the second layer that gets placed behind the screen. I didn't really have a clear idea of what this was. I put a layer of black felt on the wall behind the screen. This included felt over any hanging frames. I then hung my speakers. Any hanging material for the french cleat behind the screen was covered with the felt. I hung the screen. The screen itself does not have any material directly behind the ponte. I cannot see any speakers or frame material behind the screen while a image is being projected onto it. I have not removed the black grill over the speakers. I may try this later though to see if I can see any bleed through of the speakers. I did not put a second layer of material because I knew that to many layers will have effect on the sound. At my age I don't need to have the highs rolled off to darn much. I think I have a good balance with only using one layer of cloth for this screen.

Update. I know it was months ago I originally posted this. I wanted to update my AT screen build.

I was painting the trim around the sky lights with a gloss black paint. I saw two drops fly off the brush and I did not see it on the drop cloth but later did see that the drops had found a home on the white ponte screen. I had tried to clean it off but only made a mess of it.

So I decided to start over. I went to JoAnne Fabrics and bought some spandex. Now I doubt it is the spandex that is so popular here. My purchase was a spadex polyester mix. I bought a white and a black piece. There was no silver in stock. Anyway I stretched the material white over black.

This material is much more open weave than the ponte. I see now that ponte only needs one layer. The spandex is much more translucent so two layers is a must from what I can see.

The color of the screen is much more gray than the previous build. As a result the black level is deeper than I have had with this projector. Color is much more rich. I will be doing some adjustments with contrast and brightness soon but I can see now that I am going to like the change.

I still have the same speakers and am looking to change my AV processor. I won't be in a big hurry for this but I am looking.

Not sure what the curved screen post is about. I have not done any work with curved screens recently. I have worked on doing a baffle wall behind the ac screen this last weekend. I have to say, the improvement in sound coming from the minimus speakers was quite good. Stereo imaging did improve a lot. I will work on some photos that I took while doing the project.

Great looking project. I was just confused that I was being told I was the one doing the curved screen project.

The material I used was for swimwear. I originally used white over black, but changed it to a white over a silver they had. The black was just making the screen to dark for my system. I have a Mitsubishi 3800. The silver did lighten things up a bit. I will work on getting some photos of the new updates. I did notice that changing from the white ponte to spandex did make the image improve in sharpness. The ponte's thread structure was just to course for the image to render very well. With spandex the thread structure was much finer and so was the resulting projected image.

I know, I know, there aren't any pics yet but I do have to share. I have completed the baffle wall build. I really like it so far. The front stage imaging is better. Panning across the front stage is better. When I would do level adjustments it seemed that the front left and front center speaker was a bit hard to hear differences of localization. The two just seemed to be putting out sound but to say that is left and that is center was a bit hard to do unless I looked at the gui screen saying which speaker was being fed level signal to.

After the baffle, he there is left and there is center. Oh and the right channel is there as it always has been. I used the minims speakers and the mid bass has been bumped up as I expected. I had used these speakers years ago in another home theater build and noticed that when I had built a pocket in the wall to put these speakers into the bass response was improved. So going on that old experience I did expect them to have improved performance again being placed into a baffle. I was not let down.

Now the first movie I watched I thought that maybe I had made a mistake. I think now that it was the way the mixing or mic work was done on the movie. Second move, wow it sounded great. Second movie was the the last Borne movie so I know the budget for sound was better than the sound budget of the first. The first was Legend of Bagger Vance on DVD. Second was a Blueray. My vote is that the Borne film on Blueray will be more telling of what I can expect from my new wall vs. an older DVD soundtrack.

It has been pretty busy at work of late. I will get to the pics up as soon as I can come home and not feel completely tapped out.

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This is the hanger for the screen. I built a cleat system to hang the screen. I have been using this for awhile and it has worked out very well. I just have to modify things a bit for the new screen.

This is a close up of the hanger. I have attached it into a wall stud to bear the weight. I cut a 1x4 to form the wall cleat. I attached this to the 2x4 and it is pretty easy to hang and remove for any work I need to do.

This is the baffle. I have the three holes cut for the speakers. I have not yet attached the cleat for hanging.

Here is the box I will slip the speaker into.

I then installed box into the cut outs and used a nailer to secure them in place. I won't be nailing them in this step though that comes later. I am just checking fit.
Edited by awblackmon - 1/11/13 at 6:41am

The baffle was moved upstairs and put into place. I used the cleat hanger system to get it into place and center it horizontally.

Again, just fitting. The speaker fits fairly tight but not so much I can't move it forward or back if I need to.

Now I am installing a frame around the baffle. This frame will create a bit of rigidity and be a support for the insulation. I tried to find a local source for rigid fiberglass but no one has it around here. I was also in a bit of a hurry so I decided to do some research for absorbing coefecient and found maybe I can use a different material.

Ok, now I put some additional supports for the insulation.