Tanner Ridge Cinema Construction Thread - Page 12

Hi Craig - are you looking for a pic of the front, or the rear area around the rack?

As for the shortened bifold access, I'm 6'5" so ducking is necessary I'm in and out of there so infrequently, that it is not really a bother having a smaller portal to my gear. I use the extra room back there for miscellaneous storage and an emergency kit; I really only go back there maybe half a dozen times per year. My riser technically should have been a few inches higher, but I opted to try and retain at least a little headroom with the soffit so that tall folks aren't as likely to hit their heads - a little bit of a compromise in the end.

Cheers,

Hi Jim! During the framing, I left an opening between the 2x4 studs of 20.5 inches (20.5" minus 2 sets of 3/4" trim = 19" total width) - this way, once the drywall was up, I could trim the inside faces with 3/4 inch trim molding to provide a more 'finished look' than the lumber. Mind you, you only see it from the back From the front side, it provides a 'platform' for the faceplate screws to sink into as opposed to just screwing directly into the 2x4. Probably not required, but I think I may have overthought things a little


Indeed. Upon reflection, I suppose no other real reason other than I was really OCD that day. I figured it would hide the transition from drywall to the studs / 3/4" trim / framing and look a little nicer

I hope that helps, and Happy New Year to all!

Cheers,

By all means, throw in a few pics!

Sorry I haven't been around the board much lately.....in the midst of a full kitchen gut (amongst other renos, and rescuing the theater from a recently failed 40gal HW Tank)





Trying to give the kitchen the same finish quality as the theater downstairs Maybe put an IB Sub in above the ovens??

When I've got a bit more 'non-load-bearing-wall-removal' time, I think I might start up a rack thread with some more detailed steps of what I did - I still field quite a few rack PM's here and there, and wonder maybe if it would be more helpful if I corralled all the info all into a single thread?

Any thoughts on this are most welcomed!

+1 - those are excellent plaques! Where from?

Well. it's been some time now, and upgrade-itis has taken hold

Up until now, we mainly used the theater for movies/gamin and not much in the way of TV watching. I was still 'old school' and had analogue cable to my other TVs, but now the cable company is reclaiming tiers and transitioning everything to digital. I had originally looked at some of the HD-PVRs offered over the years, but with prices ~$748, I never really took the plunge.

Now, the cable company is starting to roll out an Arris Gateway solution, allowing users to use a 6 tuner gateway box and then stream live and recorded content to 'expander portals' using MoCa. This got me interested to make the switch, especially since it looks like they are going to enable DNLA within the units as well!

I'm waiting for the beta testing to finish up, and then likely I'll be installing this system into the house as opposed to building various media streaming boxes and such for my home network. Very interested in seeing what the new gateway system will handle.

Here's a linky for those who are curious:

http://www.shaw.ca/Gateway/

In the meantime, the provider gave me a DCX3200 gratis until I'm ready to go. Believe it or not, this is the first HDTV tuner I've put into the room So far, it looks like this may change our family's viewing habits!

Next order of business as well is to add on to my IR system to accommodate the newer equipment. I'm also looking at replacing the aging AVR with an Onkyo of some flavor in order to finally gain some newer audio tweaks, some HDMI ports and finally tame the cable monsters in the closet. Time to cut some more plates for the Rack.

Looking forward to the upgrades

Cheers,

Hi AT1AW,

I don't really know if there is such thing as an 'average cost' - I think it all depends upon what each member's personal tastes and goals are. I've seen some great setups that cost less than $2K that (at least to me) seem to really capture that 'home theater feel/experience' - and some that are 40x that amount that fall a bit short. In the end, it's most likely your own 'vision' of the project that will determine the budget and the awesomeness factor

For 15K, I would say you are well within reason (unless your goal is a 40 seat IMAX of course!) to achieve a great build. From my recollection, my build was in or around the $12K mark (including paint rollers, Tylenol, beer etc). When I planned mine out, I felt it was more prudent to plan and design the room and spend the larger portion there, since equipment will always come and go and you are less likely to re-do rooms over and over. Reasonable speakers in a well designed room will sound far, far better than expensive ones in a 10x10x10 drywall box

I would encourage you to plan things out such as whether sound isolation is desirable (close neighbors? Kids with early bedtimes?), overall use of the room (dedicated or multi-purpose?), how many seats you anticipate needing.....For me, the most difficult part was the pre-planning to decide the where/why/how much as opposed to the actual building part.

I would encourage you to start up a thread, where you can throw ideas around with the folks here and see how your goal develops - there are some great resources here that can add so many new ideas and ways of doing things that I'm certain that at the end of it, you will have a HT both you and the Minister of Finance will enjoy! And if you have any questions, by all means feel free to post them and I'll do my best to give you my best guess


Cheers,

Upgrade, at last!

Unboxed an Onkyo TX-NR609 today, and am in the throes of swapping out the older Sony STR-DE345 AVR that was handling the seating transducers. I've kept the Sony 945 for that duty, and have gotten to the point of initial hookup and testing. Removed about 8 lbs of now defunct cabling (component, HDMI switchers etc), and will have to do some cable tidying over the next while.

So far, I'm very impressed with the Onkyo - no problems reaching decent listening levels within the room space, and the SQ seems at first blush to be very good through the Paradigms. There is a crap-load of features and tweaks I'm going to have to explore over the next little while to tweak/tease the best performance out of things But even with the initial Audyssey setup, a handful of test movies sounded great (and now I'm able to enjoy some of the newer codecs!). I'm wondering how long of a break-in period the AVR might need - any ideas?

In the next few weeks, I'll have to cut out some new faceplates for the rack, since I've jockeyed the slots around to accommodate the new gear. I'll try and throw up some pics once things are getting close to complete

Cheers,

I cannot remember if I ever posted the paint color in the thread
For those following, it's a Sico brand paint from Rona, named 'TAIGA', color card number '4164-73', in a Satin Flat finish. The details on the can label are: 171-503 Neutral Base, SICO 4000, Base 3, A-7C4,Q-3C24, V-40.

I really do like this color for the HT - when the lights go down, the wall color essentially fades to black, and has no hue/tone whatsoever! Plus, it hides any drywall mistakes I've made very nicely.....

Just remember it dries a couple shades darker than when you view it wet or on the card. I hope that helps!

Cheers,

I finally got around to updating the rack and faceplates I decided to delete the Xbox, since we have a Kinect now and tend to move the console around the house a bit more often. When we run it in the theater, I can now just plug into a front HDMI port of the Onkyo as and when required.

As I moved basically every component other than the Behringer, I figured I would just re-do all of the other plates and freshen things up a bit. Trip to the metal shop and $33 got me enough to do the entire rack plus a few extra feet if needed again later.

Some progress and installation pics:


































Much better! We decided to throw the Wii in there, even though it is not used all too often. I may try and hunt down a black case for it, so it does not appear to be such an obvious abomination


Cheers,

I also took the opportunity to clean up the spaghetti monster of wires in the back - I finally 'permanently' mounted the ISY99 and a new Gigabit 8 port switch:



I had to do a Monoprice order anyways for some computer stuff, so I picked up some 'proper lengths' of Cat5/RCA/and HDMI to reduce the amount of clutter I had collected back there over the last while

Less things for cobwebs to stick to

Cheers,

Hi CaLevi and GRBoomer!

The aluminum plate is .063 (1/16") thick - it is rigid enough to hold it's shape quite well, although some of the areas where it is less than an inch all the way around it tends to be a little less stable - you could either use thicker stock (I think the next size up is .080 (5/64)), or what I do to add stability for 'finger presses' is add 3M tape to link the panels together in the 'weaker' areas:



(I don't steel wool and paint the back side surfaces; I never really look at them anyways )

I haven't worked with the thicker aluminum, but the .063 is pretty easy to work with, especially when trying to cut out odd shapes and retain a nice finished edge:





As for the 'extra bit' that sits between the screw and faceplate, I used some nickel plated Brass Cup washers - they can be found in the clear plastic boxes usually in the hardware isle of most Big Orange or other hardware stores. I originally left mine nickel, but after a while felt they would be better black:





I painted them with the same Satin Mar-Hyde I use for the plates, and just leave the drywall screws with their original finish .

Cheers,

Haven't been lurking AVS in a while (but love the new layout!!), but thought I'd share the article from earlier this year - I made it into an Electronic House article

http://www.electronichouse.com/article/diyer_racks_up_unique_storage_system/diy

It is very weird to see your build written about in third person! I guess this should prompt me to get around to doing some upgrades ....if I ever finish my kitchen

Cheers,

Tom