The official SeymourAV center stage screen thread!

ss9001,

I bought some Phifer 4500 screen material from SeymourAV, and am very impressed with both the material and the service from them. The material was priced fairly, was shipped promptly and looks great. I built my screen myself, and SeymourAV was very helpful with some good tips on how to do it.

Here's a link to another thread here on AVS that has comments from others on the Phifer 4500. Bulldogger is using the screen material too, and has been posting on how his DIY screen is progressing. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post10446282

Good luck,

Mike

Hey ss9001,

Take a look at my post below about SeymourAV.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7&page=2&pp=30


I can tell you that I have been doing a lot research on acoustic transparent screens and this material and Customer service from SeymourAV ROCKS!!....It looks so much better then the brand names that are out there, And don't forget they cost 5X as much as the SeymourAV dose...The SMX and the SeymourAV side by side looks the same...but with the cost and customer service....I had to go with SeymourAV.

Look at my post and you can see some photos as well.

I am quite happy with the service I have gotten as well. I do not think you can tell the SW4500 and SMX720 apart with the naked eye. I am building a DIY electric screen with the material. I wish the electric screen from Seymour would have been available when I started. Still, I am enjoying building a screen. The whole project has been a lot of fun. As far as technical expertise, Chris is WAY ahead of everyone that I have discussed these types of materials with. He can discuss the rated stretch of the fabric in X and Y coordinates, acoustical transparency as well as the thickness of the various materials. I was a bit skeptical before I talked to him. He more than convinced me of his knowledge and being an engineer does not hurt either. Before all is said and done, the competition is going to be forced to copy Chris to remain competative. Great time for DIY or pre-fab acoustical screens. I attached a pic of my material with the sW4500 at the bottom and black 10% sW2390 at top. I will not need to mask the top. I used the 63 inch material for the screen section.

I'm sitting about 11 feet from a 49" constant height screen setup, which makes for a 126" diagonal 2.37 screen, and a 100" diagonal 1.85 screen. My projector is a 720p Panasonic 900, which looks great with SD-DVD's and outstanding with HD-DVD's. I am feeding my video sources through and scaling with an Anthem D2 processor, and using a Prismasonic H1400 FE anamorphic lens to stretch my 2.37 movies.

BTW, it's nice to see our thread back, from where ever it went to. I was starting to think that Alzheimers had kicked in early!

I also bought a screen from SeymourAV after researching as much as I could online about AT screen materials. My original plan was to just pick up some material and DIY a roll up screen that would drop in front of my RPTV when I wanted to watch a movie, but I ended up with a made to order remote controlled electric roll up.

Customer service was top notch - Chris is a real nice guy to deal with- he took the time to walk me through the process, and was extremely helpful with all my requests- from my plans to DIY through to the final product details. The price was so reasonable that I decided to let them build the entire electric roll up screen for me. There are options to basically a la carte components from the material up to a fully assembled electric screen. My screen is an 80"wide 16x9 (with black backing due to the TV and other equipment behind the screen). I use it for a NEC 9PG Xtra CRT projector. I sit about 11 feet back, and the image and sound are great. I am very pleased with the service I received, and quality of their product.

Dan

DanOO,

I also placed my SeymourAV Phifer 4500 screen in front of my RPTV and sound system. This type of AT screen is great for this purpose. There are a lot of people like us who would like to use a projector and a screen, but only have one spot where it will work, and their current TV and speakers are already there. This is where an accoustically transparent roll down screen is the ONLY solution for setups like this. You can truly have the best of both worlds, by using your HDTV for every day viewing, and a projector and AT screen setup for movies and special events.

SeymourAV is the only company I am aware of who is currently selling an electric roll down screen using the Phifer 4500 AT material. With the quality and price of his electric screens, Chris has really hit a home run!

Where do you get pricing and specs? I know the Phifer warehouse here in Portland sells it for $40 a lineal yard through a blinds/ shades dealer but when I was checking out the 5% openess factor it was driving my Audyssey system crazy as compared to the 7% and 10% openess of other products like SmX and Screen research. When placing it in front of one speaker in the front soundstage it was saying that speaker was out of phase and changing the frequency response quite a bit. Is this offered in 7% and 10% openess?

Mark P,

Go to SeymourAV and in the upper right of this web page click on STORE for pricing and ARTICLES for specs. I'm sure that Chris would be very willing to discuss the audio testing and specs with you if you want to email him.

I don't have an auto EQ like Audyssey in my system anymore, but I am very pleased with the sound quality of movies using this screen in front of my speakers. I am using an Anthem D2 processor, a Sunfire Cinema 7 amp, and Rocket 850's as front main speakers, and the Rocket "Bigfoot" center channel.

2.5 db @ 10k, no wonder it was playing heck with Audyessey. Im curious who lab tested the gain at 1.16

Can Chris come to the forums for questions and such like the rest of the owners or reps like Screen Research, SMX, Carada and the rest or are you his rep?

Let's try to keep this thread open by not discussing pricing. Please edit your post.

Hi Mark -

I don't have experience with the out-board Audysseys, but the built-in MultEQ in the Denons work without issue. I know the separate Audyssey is a much more sophisticated tool, but the Phifer 4500 has been in several Denon systems: two 3806s, one 4306 or 4806 - can't remember which, and their big 5805, which should come with a built-in hand truck. All but one were center-only-behind-the-screen systems. None of them failed polarity check.

In my system, I've had (polarity) success with other room correction systems. The TacT I had for a while passed polarity checks just fine (only my center channel is behind the screen), but I personally don't like the TacT. Good methodology, but just way too much. There aren't target curves to go for and as a do-no-harm audiophile, I really didn't like how much futzing with the mids and highs the system allows you to use. It made everything behave unrecognizably each time I powered up. I'd get it cal'd to sound great and then later it just sounded completely wrong.

While the science behind the Audyssey is solid, I'm much more skeptical of DSP above the mid-bass range of, say, 300Hz. Correcting for room modes <300Hz is an entirely different animal than other goals >300Hz. And I'd argue the former is a realistic problem to fight with DSP and the latter is a can of worms.

I compared the Meridian and Lexicon room correction systems, and I preferred the Lexicon. Both only address <250-<300Hz, so they just get out of the way of the midrange and treble. The Meridian always passed polarity check with either screen up or down. The Lexicon mc-12b(v5.0 EQ) was unfortunately the winner. It nailed my room modes, dramatically improving tone, pace, and bass transient.

Its cal system has been tricky for me. It fails polarity check around 40% of the time and its users commonly know to just double-check things and if you know everything's in polarity, just ignore the "failure." I ran the auto-calibration on the four woven AT screens I have, and could not find any correlation with any AT fabric and any polarity failure. After 40 cals (4 screens x 10 tests), all four woven AT screens were within +/- 1 polarity failure. That, together with results such as the L or SR channels being the ones that measured out of polarity, or screen-up/screen-down not changing things, point to none the screens affecting the polarity.

One thing to watch for is for systems using horizontally aligned MTM center channels; if you are taking multiple measurements you may run into lobing effects on the center. They can affect your polarity checks as well as complicate the room correction's job in the frequency range of the two midranges.

Finally, I'm not sure what the "-2.5dB at 10k" means. The SW4500 measured 0.8dB higher at 10k, which is of course by itself meaningless but within test uncertainty. If I average the three results around 10k, I get -1.5dB. Five results average -2.1dB around 10k. The nine results around 10k average -1.5dB. Within a responsible context, all four woven AT screens I have measured nearly identically.

Cheers,
Chris

Im not sure where I got 10K either, after revisiting, and finding the smoothed graph its more at 5k.

The Audyessey was on a Denon 5805 ( yes the refrigerator cart one) which is pretty fun to play around with when dealing with these AT screens. The amount of testing I did with Phifer screens was pretty intense with the Audyessey while waiting for the real tests to be performed. The funny thing is, its a pretty reliable tool in telling attenuations and combfiltering ( what else is going to make a speaker out of phase in controlled situations?) regardless, all 3 of my speakers are going behind the screen so any effects the sunshades have would be simular.................well that is until you tow in your left/rights. Did you do any testing with the 5% open fabric when speakers are properly towed? The results would be interesting if you have them. I know what mine were.

By the way, the 5% open weave failed polarity 100% of the time, didnt matter the position vertical/horizontal, 1", 2", 20" away. Now the 7% (SmX) never failed polarity which is helping in my decision which has not been made up even a year later. Who knows, someone might be introducing an even better product in the coming months and I am in no hurry and open to all products.

Are you planning on selling the 7% and 10% openess Shearweaves as well, or just sticking with the 5% open and where was it you came up with the 1.16 gain out of curiosity. I am kind of curious about the claims of combfiltering as well since speaker grille cloth combfilters, do you have unsmoothed charts to confirm no combfiltering?

any wave issues?? I just cant have waves..I currently have an Elite Cinetesion that i have drop in front of my tv, but unfortunately my center sits behind it..and Im looking to make that change to something like this..

I don't have any wave issues with the Phifer 4500 screen material. I built my own screen with this material, and attaching it to a non-flexing roller pipe and getting it straight on the roller seemed to eliminate any potential wave problems. I don't even have any weight on the bottom, besides the black velvet strip I sewed on. I'm sure that SeymourAV has much better equipment to mount the screens properly than I did! I also believe that tab tensioning is an upcoming option, according to their web site.

From my experience I think that the Phifer 4500 screen material is one of the more wave resistant screen products out there.

Hi Mark -

Those results were 1/6 octave smoothed to reflect audibility, but 1/24 octave results were also shown in the test results nearly midway down the articles page. I say "will not audibly comb filter" because of your point 1) that even some grill fabric will measurably comb filter, but 2) high-Q comb filtering is not audible - smoothing to reflect psycho-acoustical effects will show this, 3) comb filtering in the top two octaves (>5kHz) is especially inaudible, and 3) all four woven solar shade-style AT screens I have measured practically identical.

Comb filtering is much more severe for most MTM center speakers that are horizontally aligned. Those speakers, w/ AT screens or not, often give auto-EQ routines polarity fits unless they are only measured on the center axis. I encourage people with AT screens to at least try vertically orienting their center channel to improve (sometimes cancel) midrange comb filtering / lobing across different seats.

I only have my center behind the screen. The L/R are towed (toed? toad?) for perfect 2-channel listening (vinyl, etc.) This allowed me to isolate any effect the screen had on the speaker. The TacT (full freq DSP) passed polarity fine. The Meridian passed polarity fine. The Lexicon's RoomEQ is just a roll of the dice; independent of screen up/down or channel. And the four Denons with Audyssey installations I know of all reported to test fine. I researched other 5% woven AT screen owners and didn't find any evidence of polarity issues, either.

I don't recommend towing (toeing?) in the L/R speakers behind AT material. If the angle is significant, the drivers won't have open air paths to the seating. You want to fire straight through any AT screen in general. If you really have to angle the L/R, get them out from behind the screen to the sides. Ideal angle of incidence = 0.

What center channel are you using? Some speakers have inverted-phase tweeters, so when Lexicon users encounter stubborn polarity "failures" and they know everything is wired perfectly, Lexicon advises to ignore the flag and use the cal results; the DSP will still work as designed.

Cheers,
Chris

If your perspective is from other non-tensioned screens with supported fabrics (reinforced non-AT vinyl or woven AT screens), then it is very reasonably flat. Using velvet trim to get the light absorptive benefits makes flatness harder and materials and methods were changed to get it - again, very reasonably flat.

That said, it's not a tensioned screen. It's not drum tight. If your perspective is from tensioned screens, then what some may call flat may not satisfy you.

Tab-tensioned designs are currently being built as alphas.

Cheers,
Chris

ss,

I agree that a SeymourAV screen makes having a projector system in our multi-purpose rooms much more feasible. It's great to be able to drop a screen down in front of your existing TV and speakers, and not have to change your room layout at all. The affordable price helps as well!

You SHOULD be excited, because if you have not experienced a projector system in your home before, you will be blown away! My kids USED to be impressed with my 64" HDTV, but now they think it's too small for movies! (and they are right)

I am building a DIY electric screen. Decided to change motors so my project is stalled. I am working with Chris and plan to experiment with some tensioning methods if I get waves. I hate waves.

These have been around for years now, they are blackout shades and I have 4 of them. They have a piece of 1/8"thick, 1/2" wide steel slid into a sewed sleeve. Use industrial velcro if you dont have access to a sewing machine. Tensioners are terrible and produce waves every time as do the cheapo rollers that slightly sag and come with some shades

Bulldogger,

I really don't think you will have any problems with significant waves as long as you get your screen attached to your roller straight. I know that you spent a lot of time finding a rigid roller pipe, so that won't be an issue!

Hey folks,

Just picked up some material for a screen from Chris looking foward to receiving it. I looked at Chillinintheoc's link up above and his shots look really nice. Just wondering if anyone else has any screenshots of this material in action. Would love to see them, thanks.

has anyone used this material in a fixed screen application? If so can you give some specifics such as the type of projector and distances.

I am looking for an SMX material replacement since it now only sells as a full kit.

thanks
Itai

I'll be using it in a fixed frame application. Unfortunately I wont have it set up for a little while longer though. Have you seen the site? seymourav.com the material appears to be the same as of the second SMX run, not sure how diferrent it is now. Above and on the site their is a pdf link for audio tests done by Chris with his material and SMX material and accoustically they performed the same. The prices are great and depending on the size screen you need you have an option of going with a 63" or a 98" wide cut.

As far as response time, I got email replies from Chris the same day I sent them to him. I even got confirmation of shipping the same day I ordered my material. So far its been a great experience.

If I go AT this is where my business goes too.

From all accounts this appears to me to be the best of the 2 companies as far as product, integrity and service.

Oman,

I may try to get some screen shots this weekend, and will try to post them when I do. The first screen shots I tried did not turn out well, so I got some tips on how to do it right, (tripod, use timer, over/under expose) and will see how they turn out this time. I should have taken some shots of the "Dreamgirls" HD-DVD I rented from Netflix last weekend. The PQ was outstanding on my setup, as was the audio. Definitely a "thumbs up" movie!