Oh no! Not another one of those "I just began my home theatre thread" threads - Page 11

NP. I'm glad if anything I went through is useful to other people who are putting a room together!

I'm so close to ironing out the last big issue. After that it is all small, easily fixed issues that I can work on myself.

Thanks Ray!

I do, but all of that will have to wait until I get back from vacation. I don't think my house sitter is capable of posting them...

BTW, I'm very happy with the use of diffusion over absorption in most areas of my room. I plan on experimenting a little more with the BAD ARC panels on the side walls (I have absorption panels I can switch in and out), and I need to add some additional BAD panels on the ceiling for the center channel, but for the time being it isn't an emergency. If anything I would like to add those BAD panels on the ceiling before experimenting with switching diffusion and absorption around more.

List of things to do:

1. Buy and mount center channel BAD treatments for ceiling.
2. Get Denon Universal Blu-Ray player next month.
3. Get replacement projector, Sim2 Lumis and snake HOST cable through ceiling to PJ mount.
4. Check if moire is still there with new PJ's convergence, and if so find the correct hole punch angles and order replacement screen from Stewartscreen.
5. Noise treat equipment closet.
6. Patch minor holes by electrical outlets and buy additional electrical outlet covers (as well as paint them the room color)

In addition to the list, I just added two more pinball machines to my basement. I now have the following machines (or will by sometime next week!):

• Addams Family
• Twilight Zone
• Star Trek Next Generation

I just bought a pair of the Shure SE530 earphones on Ebay at a decent price. I must say, these are impressive for the form factor; much better than any stock earbuds I have heard. I"m using the triple flanges and the bass impact is very impressive considering the size of these things...

Are they as good as my AKG 701s? No... But that is largely because of comfortability factor (I can feel the flanges tickling my brain!). Though, the sound isn't as open on these earbuds as on the AKG-701s either...

On the bright side of things, I'm getting a good ear cleaning every time I remove the buds...

I changed my Ayre MX-R and Bryston PowerPac 300 SST monoblocks to Emotiva XPA-1 monoblocks. I couldn't hear any difference between them when switching them out, so I've decided to keep the XPA-1s and use the left over money from selling the old equipment for a 2009 Yamaha Star VMax I ordered last year that is now ready for pickup at the dealer (rather than keep the entire amount on the high interest credit line the bank gave me for the motorcycle...).

I'm extremely happy with them; they sound phenomenal. I do prefer the AKG 701s because they are a bit more open and because the triple flanges can be uncomfortable. Overall, for noise reduction and travel ability, the 530s are top notch. Outside my home they are the best solution I have earphone-wise for excellent sound quality without spending four times the money...

Nope, I never bought the KX-R. I decided to go 100% multi-channel instead, the results of which have been remarkable. The 7.1 matricing of 2 channel material fills out the soundstage like 2 channel was never capable of doing on its own.

I went this route because I wasn't noticing any worthwhile differences between my separate two channel setup and the surround setup when it was set to stereo... when using the C-5xe on both.

I'm very excited. I already signed all the paper work on Saturday. All I need now is for all this snow to stop!!

I want it home also, but I have nowhere to put it unless I put the one of the SUVs outside or the Lotus. It's still too cold to leave anything else outside!

I thought I would post a stereo comparison of my curent layout with no Audyssey and with Audyssey flat. Why did it take so long you ask? Well, because I'm lazy...

I hear significant improvements over the other methods I used when trying to tame the nasty modes I have in this room. A given though, stereo is not a great benchmark for my daily listening experience, because I use modes that pull ambience from two channel material and fill in all 7.1 channels of my system... This is definitely better than any previous measurements I was able to get though. The trouble spots that annoyed me the most are eliminated for me perceptually when I listen to music. Is it perfect? I don't know, probably as perfect as it needs to be for me. There really isn't anything that is irritating me about the sound like there was with previous room corrections before I manually adjusted them.

Jason Turk is bringing over my Lumis and setting it up tomorrow.

AVS Store stood behind all the problems I had with the C3X1080s and backed me on a fair upgrade price because of it. They are a pleasure to do business with. I'm a happy customer.

Thought I would update:

I bought the new Oppo BDP-83 Blu-Ray player, it arrived a few days ago and it is sitting in my living room in the box. I am planning on hooking it up tonight in the HT and using it there temporarily until the Denon DVD-A1UDCI is released (which would fuse perfectly with my Denon AVP...).

I know that the A1UDCI may be overkill and I might not even hear a difference, but I want to use the shared timing clock between the two Denon pieces.

My first Sim2 Lumis had an issue, so it is being replaced by Jason this Saturday. He'll be dropping by to calibrate it in the HT as well. I also bought a 150" diagonal Elite Screens EZ-Cinema that I can move around outside the house. I bought an Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 6500UB to use with the screen, to show outdoor Blu-Ray and DVD movies for the kids at night, either while they swim in the pool or while they are sitting in the yard. I am going to use my Samson Resolv 80a active studio monitors for sound, since I can just plug those directly into the back of a Blu-Ray player; thus I won't need to mess with a preamplifier, preprocessor or receiver. I like that I will be able to move the setup around anywhere in the backyard with a long orange extension cord.

I'm still waiting on the replacement sound treatments (absorption) that will replace the diffusion on the 1st reflection points. IME with the surround sound, the absorption makes the sound more realistic...

Heheh. I'll have to keep that in mind when setting things up. I've been thinking that I probably will just set it up outside the pool area... At least until they are old enough to just sit on a floating lawn chair and watch a movie instead of splashing around like crazy.

I think we will just end up showing movies by the pool with the pool cover closed. It doesn't make much sense to do both at once, and the pool deck and chairs will be perfect for lounging while watching a movie!

Disaster Strikes!

My room is temporarily out of commission and almost three entire walls of the room are being removed due to sewage spill in the basement.

It appears all my important equipment is fine. I do need to have the speakers and electronics inspected (in case of possible damage to the wooden bases and humidity to the electronics and drivers) and some of the cables replaced.

I won't have my room for awhile, but I'm trying to look at this as an opportunity to rebuild the room completely for 7.1 surround sound instead of keeping the two channel emphasis. Insurance will cover the cost of rebuilding the room, and I plan to invest extra of my own money to change some of the following things listed below as additional design changes:

• Room design: hiring Dennis Erskine to redesign the room for surround sound and movies
• Screen type: from a recessed electronic screen to a something like a permanently mounted CineCurve
• Seating type: from a couch to rows of comfortable movie seating
• Projector lens: adding a 2.35:1 lens
• Room dimensions: expanding or contracting boundaries of the room that are being removed due to sewage contamination.

Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I'm trying to look on the bright side of things. Every time I find myself with a free hour or two to kill my immediate reaction is to think, "I'll go read in the listening room," or, "I'll go watch a movie downstairs." It is going to take a little time for that immediate reaction to die out. I get a little verklempt when I think of going down to use the room and then remember it isn't there now.

I'm going to post some pictures of the room pretty much dismantled at this point in order to get rid of all the spillage...