Black Cat Theater (Now going BIG!) - Page 6

To address my bass needs, I decided to build a subwoofer - a 30.5"-wide THT (Tuba HT). It's total outside dimensions are 36" x 36" x 30.5" (23 cubic feet)

The bass it puts out is ridiculous. The seats in the theater shake. My wife two floors up said it felt like a monster truck was driving through our house. My brother said his balls vibrated

Here's a pic up it behind the screen - I outlined it in blue:



I've done new measurements with REW, which I'll be posting the the We Built it, We've measured it, HELP US TWEAK IT thread shortly

Stay tuned!

No update there - still just the one top/bottom section done


If you look in the "HELP US TWEAK IT" thread, you'll see that I now need to put in some traps to cover the 80-300Hz range. These could take different forms, so I'm glad the fabric is not put up yet...

I'm in the process of trying to dampen frequencies between 80-200Hz. I placed another order for OC703 from a local supplier and, just like last time, it's taking them forever to get it in. I have three ideas as to what to do with it and likely will do them all. First I'll replace all the Linacoustic on the back wall with the 4"-inch thick sheets. Next, I'll cut up what's left into triangles having 17" on their hypotenuse and then build "baby" corner traps for 1) some spots behind the screen, 2) around the recessed light tray, and 3) on the floor behind the rear row. I plan to do it in that order and measure in between. Stay tuned!

This is an interesting idea. Actively cooling the supply's air has a lot of merit.

From reading my thread, you know I struggled some with cooling system - mostly due to static pressure in the supply line and too much noise from the velocity of the airflow. As for cooling itself, it so far seems OK, not great, but good enough that I'm not actively searching for a fix... But if I had to fix it, my first thought was to try to increase the "delta", as you put it, by rerouting the exhaust to dump into a rather large and relatively cooler part of my basement. That way, it seems that, by the time the air comes back to theater's supply, it would've cooled off quite a bit.

An alternative idea I have is to use another fan to actively move air around the whole basement. If you recall the pics of my basement from the early posts, it can be roughly thought of as being shaped like the letter 'C', with the only thing preventing it being an 'O' is a mechanical/storage room (the stairs come down in the middle of the basement). The supply is currently on one end of the 'C' and the exhaust is near the middle of the 'C', in a hallway that leads the supply on one side and the large space on the other. I'm thinking that a new fan could close the loop, that is, make an 'O', by piping air from one side to the other, though the mechanical/storage room, perhaps cooling it off some in the process, which would be good for me since I have some computers in there...

Anyway,since it's outside the theater and the current solution seems OK enough, I'm holding off on playing with it for now. But if it comes around again, I'll give your idea some more thought - thanks!

My issue isn't uneven LFE - actually, both rows seem pretty darn good (no nulls or nodes). My issue is that the LFE isn't being reduced by at least 20dB within 150ms, thus causing it to not be as accurate sounding as it could. My huge corner base traps seem to be doing the trick for the 15-80Hz range, now I need to target this next frequency range. The concern doesn't exist so much for higher frequencies, as the 1" Linacoustic grabs them...

While I managed to install more OC703, I haven't retested the sound yet - it's on my short list now that the bar and AV rack are almost finished. The AV rack has been quite a challenge - building the drawers and drawer fronts myself - at least I got more tools for the effort Seriously though, the room sounds great and there isn't any room left to put more OC703 if I wanted to. At this point, I can only play with batting and scrim. BIG, We're going to get this thing buttoned up this summer!

Regarding the fan, BIG's response is spot on regarding insulation and access. My fans are outside the theater room, each fan connected to the theater room via 25' of 3M's acoustical flex duct with a number of 90-degree turns in their runs. The fans' noise is not audible through this flex duct. Outside the room, the fans can be heard through their plastic access panels, but it's not loud enough to irritate me.