First time home theater "build" log - Page 3

I'm not sure which ones were the SHO-10's. I only heard another sub setup since they had already listened to most of the stuff prior to me getting there. The ones I heard were gorilla's dual subs in 1 box, that he has 2 of. If those are the ones you are talking about, then yea they were pretty damn insane. I only heard those with music after we moved the caps out to my car and he hooked them back up, but they sounded VERY nice for the music we had going. They just sounded very crisp and had a crazy punch to them. Can't believe he is getting 4 more of them haha.

Hell yea man, I can't remember the last time the skins controlled their destiny for the division. I will enjoy it while I can, but I'm not changing my avatar just yet lol.

BTW I saw your build thread a while ago and it's awesome man. I showed my wife the video of your poster that has the lights on it and she was like "I want one of those!".

Ah snap gotcha. Yea they sounded great i was pretty surprised when he told me that they were like $400 a piece I think. Definitely sounded great even when he had them blasted, and he has the same receiver that I have.

As far as room treatments go, as of now I'm not doing anything lol. Just going to see how it sounds as is, but after I get my stuff all setup and see how it sounds maybe there will be some changes made such as the sound panels on the wall or something.

Cool man yea I'm going to get everything hooked up and see how it sounds then see what I want to do sound treatment wise. I saw this thread here:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1316623/diy-custom-printed-movie-poster-acoustic-panels-cheap

And I really like how some of those came out and could be nice wall decoration. Of course there will be one with just Redskins stuff on it if I do it but I am going to maybe look into that in the not to distant future. I suck at wood work but if HD can cut the pieces I need, I could probably glue them together and assemble them.

I ordered a buncha wires today from monoprice to get my wiring process under way in the next few weekends. My buddy who is a certified electrician is going to help me install 2 dedicated 20amp circuits with their own outlets to the closet I'm using, as well as an outlet on the ceiling near my projector. Then we're going to do the in wall speaker wiring and run a coax and cat5e wire from my other room to the closet. Hopefully we can get it all done with minimal holes cut in the wall lol.

I also think I'm going to go with building a rack in the closet with these types of wall tracks:

http://www.homedepot.com/Storage-Organization-Shelves-Shelving-Systems-Wall-Mounted-Shelving/h_d1/N-5yc1vZc3ls/R-100194576/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051&superSkuId=203147695#.UNE4VXdQCnk

And then just getting the shelving units and some plywood or so to put the items on. I would like the gear to be concealed in the closet after thinking about it, and that will also keep the fan noise down from any of the amps in there. I could always add an exhaust fan as well if it got too hot in there. This will save tons of money over doing some actual rack stuff as well, and since I'm hiding it, I think that will be just fine.

Got 3 JTR Triple 12's on the way, should have them Monday if there are no delays due to the holiday or storm up north!

Got my rack today.



Almost wish I got one that is 4 feet wide instead of 3 feet, but I think that will be enough since I only have some consoles, a receiver, amp, and a cable box.

Well here is my temp setup until I can get my in-wall wiring done hopefully next Saturday. I still need to get my surrounds though.





Gotta love that A/V rack!

Yeah they are going to be on stands. As far as where they are located, it's just the layout in the room and what we want to do down there. We're going to put a bar over to the left side of the room eventually.

As far as listening impressions, they are f'in incredible! Every person I've demoed some movie clips to is shocked that I don't even have the surrounds yet and it sounds that good already. My goal was to make it sound like a movie theater and I personally think it surpasses it. Everyone who's been in it also thinks it is better than a theater, and this is without the surrounds!

I couldn't do the in wall wiring today, my buddy was busy with something else. We're aiming for next Saturday so I hope we can do it then.

Been a while since I updated, but not much has happened until this past weekend.

My buddy who's also an electrician came over this past weekend and helped me out with the in-wall wiring, as well as installed 2 new circuits. We had an issue with the electrical box in the ceiling being too little, so he couldn't finish it all that day and he had already been there like 9 hours so we said screw it we'll do it the next day.

He was installing 2 20amp circuits for me but using 1 of the electrical wires that can run 2 circuits. 1 circuit hits the ceiling outlet, then continues onto the closet that has 2 receptacles. Then the other circuit hits the other receptacle in the closet. I plan on using that one for my amp powering my subs so it will be on it's own dedicated circuit. The other circuit is for the projector + everything else in the closet.

Here are some pics of how things were looking after he left on Saturday.

















(continued next post)

So then he came over the next day for an hour or so to finish installing the rest of the power and connecting it. Meanwhile I was installing all of the wall plates.

Where the ceiling outlet was being installed the drywall got pushed in a bit so he had to put a metal plate there to secure it, which you will see in the pics. I was going to paint over it but am just going to leave it, as it's in the ceiling and not really that big or anything.

Here are some pics after all of that stuff was done.













As you can see from the last image, I began patching the holes that were cut into the drywall. All in all we had to cut 10 holes that had to be patched. 2 of them were in the bathroom on the floor above to help get the cat5e and coax cable down a level.

Sunday night I mudded up the patched drywall and last night I sanded it. Being that this is the first time I've ever done this stuff, I think I mudded/sanded it not the best so I put a bit more mud in the patched areas last night after sanding it where a few areas did not feel 100% smooth when running my hand over them. I could still feel some of the edges a bit so I'm going to see how it turns out tonight.

I'm HOPING to get it all painted by this weekend and cleaned up because I hate how messy it is down there right now, it's killing me! But I did test out all of the speaker connections and it was pretty cool seeing everything working fine for the first time

They are going to be on the walls on a stud that is next to the speaker wall plates you see in the last 2 pictures.

Yes, they will be off center by quite a bit from the main seating position, but from the research I've done, Audyssey should fix that by calibrating the speakers properly.

Haha, thanks man. And thank you also for letting me demo your Klipsch setup, which was my original intent to purchase! But I said F it and went with stuff a little higher quality. I too doubt I will be upgrading ANY time in the near future, like at all haha. IF anything it would be more along the lines of a more powerful amp for my subs, or an external amp for the speakers. But I doubt that even at this point.

When I get everything setup and done man I will let you know if you wanna come check out how it all sounds. I'm definitely greatful for you and all the others advice who I took.

Yes I only plan on doing 5.2 not 7.2. If I had another row of seating I would MAYBE think about 7.2 but for now, only 5.2

So I've been at work all week and especially over this weekend. I was patching up the holes and sanding them during the week, then this weekend I cleaned up and painted the patches, setup my rack and tried to wire it somewhat clean, and put everything in the room back together.

Here are pics of the current setup.













And here is a panoramic shot I took with my wife's phone after it was all cleaned up.



All that is really left is the following:

1. Need to get speaker stands for the LCR speakers.

2. Need to order the iTach devices to get all my stuff online.

3. Going to get 2 Insteon dimmer switches + controller so I can control those from my remote.

4. Need to get a tablet and decide if I want to use iRule or Roomie, and if I use iRule I may just get an Android tablet.

5. Get my surrounds!

They aren't in any specific order, but my surrounds probably won't be until I get back from a trip I'm going on next month.

Nope. I am in the middle of looking for my rears though. I'm hoping to get them sooner rather than later. I've been enjoying it in the 3.2 setup and can't believe that I will be getting more speakers because it already sounds so good .

EDIT:

Actually I did make some speaker stands, I'll find the pics over in the JTR thread and post em here.