Jedirun's Theater - Finally Moving Out of the Garage - Page 3

I got the rear panels up. I am happy with the look. My wife is not as excited about it.

That is as much as I am going to do for acoustic treatment. It sounds pretty good to me. I guess it should with 9 panels of varying thicknesses behind the screen and 10 in the room.

I finally showed her Art of Flight today. She was pretty impressed.

I am going to relevel all the speakers and rerun Audyssey in the morning with the new room treatments.

Adding the GIK panels to the room lowered the levels by 2-3 db at the main listening position. I am rerunning Audyssey.

I think the room treatments really helped. It really sounds great.

Thank you.

If I get a chance this weekend, I am going to try to calibrate the intellivolume (volume trim) of inputs for mmy PS3 (Blu-Ray), HD DVD and music so that reference, really means reference. I know it can get louder than I care to listen without distortion, but I am interested in knowing the actual numbers so that I have a true frame of reference. The Blu-Ray and HD DVD inputs should be easy assuming the test tones on the HD Essentials discs are accurate. However, I am using an apple airplay device for my music input. There are so many variables when setting the volume including the volume setting within iTunes and the seperate volume setting of the computer as a whole. I will look for some downloadable 75 DB pink noise files to see if I can figure out where to set these levels and leave them so that I can control the actual output with my SSP, and make the volume comprable to my other sources.

So it turns out that my Blu-ray source was sending a signal that was 4db hot.

So when I was listening to what I thought was reference, it was really +4.

I need to set the rest of my sources now.

I set my LFE to 120 hz and left the T8's at 80. I liked the sound on Avenger's and I think I will leave it this way.

I have not done much work on the theater in the past 2 weeks. I spent a little time enjoying the theater, but unfortunately had to go out of town last week and have been sick this week.

My wife and I have been trying to figure out which seats to buy. We are thinking these:

https://www.stargatecinema.com/image.php?id=1774&type=D

The style fits the room and they are supposedly well made.

There is a dealer in town for Fortress, so hopefully they have a demo of the Californian, if not or if we don't like it, we will have to go to LA at some point to try some other brands out.

This is all just an exercise at this point since we need a month or two to save up for these as well as the slanted 8 surrounds.

Right now, I really should spend some time, cleaning up the wiring in the media cabinet, since that does not cost anything.

It is the Fortress Californian. It is their budget line. I guess it has pretty much the same internals, but is not customizable and the sides and back are faux leather, with the seating surfaces made from real leather.

4 seats which is what I can fit, are $4400 delivered with manual recline. It is another $3200 for power recline.

We would just get the manual recline.

The home theater place didn't have any Fortress seats for us to try out. However, they said the Fortress rep will bring samples to them or our home, but I wonder if he will make the trip for 4 of their cheapo seats.

They had some fancy Lane seats at the dealer, which my wife did not like at all. The cushions were too long, so either her knees could not bend or her back didn't reach the seat back. She is 5'5 1/2", so not that short.

This reinforced, that unlike the speakers, that worked out well as a blind purchase, I need to make sure that she gets to sit in the seats before we buy them.

I am a little bummed that in order to get decent seats, they will likely cost more per chair than my cost per LCR cost per speaker.
Edited by Jedirun - 1/22/13 at 5:08pm

I think you are right, I have not heard of anyone else mentioning them in Southern California.

How is your system coming along?

You are right. We should probably make our way up to the home theater seat showroom in LA and see if there is something that we like.

definitely.

Yes, that is the place I was thinking of visiting. However, thanks for mentioning it. I ended up spending some time on the site today and noticed this riserless multilevel seating.

http://www.4seating.com/seatcraft-theater-seating/home-theater-rialto-stage-seating.htm

We will have to check it out when we go there. They don't have Fortress, but I may need to just forget about them. Their local rep has not gotten back to us. This may be because 4 of their cheap seats is not worth his time.

With all of the selection there, I think I will definitely find something that my wife will like.

That is the goal. An appearance my wife is happy with and a hidden over the top system.

I may add more subs at some point, but for now, the S2 is blowing me away with its output in my small room. Of course it was a big jump from my DIY 12 with a 250 watt amp.

I will do that. By the time yours is installed hopefully we are past the horrible cold that has hit my whole family.

By the way, what are you using for your other 6 speakers and subs?

Revel puts out nice products. I am sure it sounds amazing.

JL audio as well. I hear the output is pretty impressive for the size.