OK, so I started a thread a couple months ago, but so much has happened since then I figured I would start over.
Back in December '15 I went to see the new Star Wars movie on the brand new IMAX here in town. I walked away with the desire to "up my theater" a little. I settled on a $500 budget and figured a new subwoofer would give my theater a little better kick and make me satisfied. I already had a projector (Optoma HD131Xe) with 100" screen, an older Marantz receiver, Polk STi6 left right and center, NHT super zero's for surrounds, and an old Infinity 12" powered sub. It wasn't much but I was satisfied, at least until seeing Star Wars in the IMAX..
So I came here looking for advice. After shopping, I upped my budget to $1k and was looking at an HSU sub. After mentioning I had woodworking skills and a shop available, I was convinced to go DIY with the subs. I knew it would cause me problems and I was right! I couldn't stop there, and the following thread is the result of about 3 months of work (evenings, weekends, and even a week off my day job) and about $8k. Yeah, my $500 upgrade balooned in a hurry.
I started with a "family room" I had built about 15 years ago in my basement. It is not big - 12'8" x 14' with 7' ceilings. It was my first renovation and you will see my poor mudding skills in some of the pictures. The only soundproofing I did was adding fiberglass insulation in all walls. As much as I would love to go crazy with soundproofing, I am too cramped for space as it is. Here is what it started out looking like:
The acoustic treatments in the last pic (as well as Volt 8's in the corner) were from about a month back, but it is the only pic I have of the fireplace, which I renovated during this project. The hearth is painted tile (orange) and the brick is yellow under the paint. I did that about 15 years ago when I built the room. Since I can't get rid of it (and the gas fireplace is nice when the power goes out in the winter), I needed to make it look nice.
So in the beginning I built some subs into the end tables you can see in the 3rd pic. The subs are UM18-22's running off an inuke 6000dsp. That worked OK but the 1/4" glass moved too much for my taste, and although I loved the nearfield effect of the subs, they otherwise sounded like crap. So I built simple sealed enclosures and faced them with solid cherry. This kicked off a lot more use of Cherry wood, which is where the theater name came from. I then built Fusion 8 LCR's and Volt 8's for surrounds, all faced in solid cherry. I won't detail the speakers as I have build threads for them in the DIY section. Here are pics of the speakers:
I needed speaker stands to go with them, so I built some simple ones out of 3" sch40 PVC. I filled them with sand for stability and shot them flat black and then lacquered them with satin lacquer just like I did the speaker bodies.
With all the speakers built, I picked up a Denon X4100 receiver. I ended up adding a Fire TV box and sideloaded Kodi, then wired in a 6tb NAS to store movies. I now have about 40 blurays moved over to the NAS and it works really well. I should be able to fit about 250 before i need more storage.
With everything in place, I needed to make the room sound better. So I started building acoustic treatments.
First I did the movie poster thing with spoonflower printed fabric. Once I narrowed down my choices, I found the posters without words and resized them and sent them in. Then when I got the fabric I wrapped it around 24x36 poplar frames. I built 24x36 3" deep frames from baltic birch and wrapped them with black fabric, put a dust cover on back, and filled them with 2" thick OC703. The poster frames pressed right in and I had my first acoustic treatments. I then made 8 more using black DMD fabric and 2" OC703 (2'x4' and 3'x4') that went all around the room. 2 went on the ceiling at the first reflection point. Again, I won't detail the build as my first dedicated theater thread had all that in there. Here is an example pic:
After some hours spent fiddling with setup and sound quality, I was mostly happy, but it still wasn't enough. So I stepped it up even further. (continued on next post)
Back in December '15 I went to see the new Star Wars movie on the brand new IMAX here in town. I walked away with the desire to "up my theater" a little. I settled on a $500 budget and figured a new subwoofer would give my theater a little better kick and make me satisfied. I already had a projector (Optoma HD131Xe) with 100" screen, an older Marantz receiver, Polk STi6 left right and center, NHT super zero's for surrounds, and an old Infinity 12" powered sub. It wasn't much but I was satisfied, at least until seeing Star Wars in the IMAX..
So I came here looking for advice. After shopping, I upped my budget to $1k and was looking at an HSU sub. After mentioning I had woodworking skills and a shop available, I was convinced to go DIY with the subs. I knew it would cause me problems and I was right! I couldn't stop there, and the following thread is the result of about 3 months of work (evenings, weekends, and even a week off my day job) and about $8k. Yeah, my $500 upgrade balooned in a hurry.
I started with a "family room" I had built about 15 years ago in my basement. It is not big - 12'8" x 14' with 7' ceilings. It was my first renovation and you will see my poor mudding skills in some of the pictures. The only soundproofing I did was adding fiberglass insulation in all walls. As much as I would love to go crazy with soundproofing, I am too cramped for space as it is. Here is what it started out looking like:
The acoustic treatments in the last pic (as well as Volt 8's in the corner) were from about a month back, but it is the only pic I have of the fireplace, which I renovated during this project. The hearth is painted tile (orange) and the brick is yellow under the paint. I did that about 15 years ago when I built the room. Since I can't get rid of it (and the gas fireplace is nice when the power goes out in the winter), I needed to make it look nice.
So in the beginning I built some subs into the end tables you can see in the 3rd pic. The subs are UM18-22's running off an inuke 6000dsp. That worked OK but the 1/4" glass moved too much for my taste, and although I loved the nearfield effect of the subs, they otherwise sounded like crap. So I built simple sealed enclosures and faced them with solid cherry. This kicked off a lot more use of Cherry wood, which is where the theater name came from. I then built Fusion 8 LCR's and Volt 8's for surrounds, all faced in solid cherry. I won't detail the speakers as I have build threads for them in the DIY section. Here are pics of the speakers:
I needed speaker stands to go with them, so I built some simple ones out of 3" sch40 PVC. I filled them with sand for stability and shot them flat black and then lacquered them with satin lacquer just like I did the speaker bodies.
With all the speakers built, I picked up a Denon X4100 receiver. I ended up adding a Fire TV box and sideloaded Kodi, then wired in a 6tb NAS to store movies. I now have about 40 blurays moved over to the NAS and it works really well. I should be able to fit about 250 before i need more storage.
With everything in place, I needed to make the room sound better. So I started building acoustic treatments.
First I did the movie poster thing with spoonflower printed fabric. Once I narrowed down my choices, I found the posters without words and resized them and sent them in. Then when I got the fabric I wrapped it around 24x36 poplar frames. I built 24x36 3" deep frames from baltic birch and wrapped them with black fabric, put a dust cover on back, and filled them with 2" thick OC703. The poster frames pressed right in and I had my first acoustic treatments. I then made 8 more using black DMD fabric and 2" OC703 (2'x4' and 3'x4') that went all around the room. 2 went on the ceiling at the first reflection point. Again, I won't detail the build as my first dedicated theater thread had all that in there. Here is an example pic:
After some hours spent fiddling with setup and sound quality, I was mostly happy, but it still wasn't enough. So I stepped it up even further. (continued on next post)