Joined
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15,157 Posts
Rest In Peace or, I hope your new owners appreciate you like I did....
Main Stage:
The Rest of the Room:
This diagram and the 3d model are a bit out of date. But close.
Gear
*Projector setup for the JVC RS4/5/600. ( With custom HDR curves for JVC's and enabling of Dolby Vision.)
----
KEY LESSONS LEARNED:
1) SIX FEET is the minimum depth of a riser. I made mine five feet and it's workable but the back row cannot recline! Okay, so they wouldn't really want to, from a line of sight perspective, but they might want to raise their feet. With five feet of space, they can't. (And seven inches height is really not quite enough for them.)
2) The DOOR should go in the front of the room, if space is tight. There is a whole "dead space" section between the screen and the first row. This is the PERFECT place to have a doorway for entry/exit. Putting the door where I did, next to the seating, means you are limited in seating/walking distance right in the spot where space is at a premium. It has been annoying enough that I have though about adding a door or re-orienting the whole room (but wiring locations and the riser make that a huge task).
3) HVAC is more important to comfort than chairs or anything else in the room. I should have used a mini Split system from the start, instead of trying to rely on other methods.
----
SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT BEGINS HERE (and completes in the next post)
This is how it started. A detached garage on a 1920's house. There was no way we were going to drive a modern car to the back of the lot and into this cramped garage on a daily basis. On the other hand, it was perfectly isolated by a very large infinite air space from the rest of the living space -- and the neighbors!
It started with some sketches in the space...
Yank out the cabinets, and (important!) had the old concrete slab replaced.
ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED #1 : A traditional garage concrete floor is sloped for run off. YOU DONT WANT THAT in a home theater (or, really, any domestic room). But I wasn't smart enough to know that's how they would pour the floor, so I wasn't smart enough to tell them not to.
In the end, the building itself was so unsquare (80+ years of settling will do that) that it wasn't a complete disaster since everything had to be custom measured and plumb was never the same as what gravity wanted, but it was a miss, and a lesson learned --
-- and it would have made the whole "room within a room" easier to keep level, plumb and square.
The good news is that redwood lasts a long time so things were structurally okay -- as in not falling over or down or rotting.
But the electrical was not ideal (it would all have to be replaced). There were plants growing through one wall, due a neighbor's untended vines. There was some nasty insulation, ravaged by time and rodents. Etc. Etc.
Drywall out, and then some framing work. Get by with a little help from friends in these situations....
Killed one of the garage doors and made it a people door.
The general concept was "a room within a room".
It got a little complicated in some places, notably with the cross beams in the rafters of the garage. If we had simply made the roof lower than them, we would have had a room that was under 7 feet in height. NO GOOD.
So we went with a modified concept, where we built around them -- and the end result was that it looks like beams running through the roof of the room. Not bad. Rather proud of that solution, in fact.
Less clearly a win: Instead of just using the max space in the garage, which would have resulted in an essentially square room about 16' on each side, we carved out a space about 12' x 16' to get some rectangular-ness to the space -- thinking it would help with acoustics, and that the space outside the theater space would be a nice ante-rooom -- at first for a little exercise space, and the gear, and later (much later) for a lobby. I call this not clearly a win because I do feel a little space challenged into the room.
Not a win at all: The internal door. Well, the position is not too bad. But I made two follow on mistakes: I did not put the screen wall near the door -- which means the door is near the seats -- which means we that valuable space that could have been used for seats was needed for walking space. And the other mistake with the door: It opens INTO the theater space. Doh! The other direction, while non standard perhaps, would be far more space friendly inside it.
(Follow on lesson learned from earlier: The sloped nature of the concrete slab meant that the door could NOT be hung plumb because it would run into the sloped floor. Ugh! Of course, having it open the other direction would have solved that, too.)
Did I mention this was a dumb way to do the doors. Sure they don't collide and I can move in and out large things. But..... the theater door should open OUT into the foyer.
Some more framing. And other stuff, including painting the old walls (exterior walls) with primer, adding spray foam to seal things, using flashing vapor barrier under the framing, padding places where metal met metal (like the simpson strong ties), etc.
The spray foam was overkill. Later, I added ventilation -- both between the room and foyer and foyer and outdoors. Spray foam sealant was because I thought I'd need to keep it air tight to be sound tight. Turns out, "convoluted path" was just as effective....
And then those pesky ceiling beams. You can see where I would have liked to have put the ceiling.
And that I ran the main ceiling joists at that level.
I need to dig up the photos of what ACTUALLY worked -- to build something almost "around" the old structure, and not touch the new one at all. The contractor I hired to teach me framing and do a significant amount of the heaving lifting and work at this stage thought I was CRAZY at first, but gradually understood to the point where he has great ideas about how to achieve the decoupled goals in this odd situation.
You may wonder why I bothered to try to do it this way, given that I wasn't attached to a living space or sleeping space nor sharing a wall with a neighbor. But my goal was isolation from the outside, in addition to keeping sound from escaping. It mostly worked: Even at full tilt, if you are outside the garage, it just sounds like something faint in the distance. And when inside, if you have nothing playing, you'll not hear the outside world unless something is running a combustion engine very loud and very close.
running wires.
I wanted to achieve a few things:
Future proof as much as possible. So this meant running five or six separate 20amp circuits in the room. That way, I could separate things like the projector from the subwoofer from the space heater from the power recline chair from the electric screen from the lights on a fader from the lights not on a fader from the blah blah blah. No, I didn't plan to have all that stuff in there, but why the not spend an extra 100 bucks to run separate lines from the subpanel in order have options down the road?
I also ran lots of low voltage wire. And I am learning now I should have run even more. I ran drops for 7 locations. In each location I ran thick speaker wire, two coax, one XLR. This means I could run all active speakers in the room. And seven subwoofers. Or all passive speakers. Etc. I ended up using stuff in creative ways, such as I have had a turntable in the room, but I needed to get the line level out from the turntable pre-amp, to the speaker amp in the equipment rack outside the room. Well, there come a couple of XLR drops to the rescue -- balanced turntable audio safely attended to. Or, no matter where a sub should be placed, there's a coax/RCA or XLR output within a few feet.
What else should I have run? Probably twice as much high level speaker cable. It's relatively cheap, and there have been a few times where it would have been interesting to biamp or experiment with ab/ing between speakers, etc. But for the most part, is has worked out well.
There is an "escape valve" in that I have an open attic space above the room, and could run more cables up there and fish them down into the walls without major surgery. But I haven't resorted to that, yet.
And, of course, whenever possible (which was almost everywhere) I ran power and audio in separate places. Typically the power is run around the room laterally, and audio was run in the rafters and then down the wall. That didn't work perfectly with the overhead lights, but I think I managed to have only one 90 degree intersection and that has not proved problematic.
I ran two lighting circuits to two different switches. So far I have just used the can lights with spots in them, and the others remain unused. That's okay. There are also outlets in the ceiling. Definitely one circuit just for the projector. And some near the screen wall -- which would have been useful if I ever wanted a retractable screen -- or moved the projector to another location.
About the projector "circuit". It's actually got a male inlet plug in the equipment area outside the room, that lets me run the projector off a AV grade UPS device. In addition to the obvious benefit of being able to power down the projector nicely if the power to the house goes out, it also regulates the voltage -- which I believe keeps sensitive or finiky gear (read "JVC projector") happier. It may be a placebo.
(Aside: Having the AV grade UPS in there is nice too for firmware updates or not losing recordings on the DVR due to a power hiccup.)
LESSONS LEARNED HERE? Well, for one, run more speaker level wire. Other than that, don't be afraid to terminate! I bought nice face plates etc for the wires, and then told myself "all those extra terminations and connection points are just additional potential points of failure, and might impact the signal a little". What I really should have said is: I'm too lazy to do this part cleanly, now -- and in the future, so I'll forever have slightly ugly wiring....
Well, we'll get to that part of the story, later, as I am embarking on version 2.0 for this room.
Main Stage:
The Rest of the Room:
This diagram and the 3d model are a bit out of date. But close.
Gear
- PROJECTOR: JVC RS500 calibrated by Chad B with custom curves for HDR, souped up with an HDFury Vertex for automation and to enable Dolby Vision. It is fed by Premium Certified HDMI cables from MonoPrice.
(previously a Sony VPLHW55ES briefly, a JVC RS20 for a few years, a Sony Pearl for a few years, and a Sanyo LCD which was 720p, years before this room existed)*
SPEAKERS: - Left, Center and Right: Triad InRoom Bronze LCR
(previously Vandersteen, Thiel, Magnepan, Paradigm, Mackie, Usher, B&W, Triad Gold LCR, Definitive Technology, Revel, JBL, Emotiva, Klipsch, and others for long term auditions) - Surround duties: Triad In Wall Bronze LCR (sides & back).
(Previously Thiel, Paradigm, Mackie.) - Overhead: Triad In Ceiling Sealed Silver Rounds. (Currently selling these since I want something smaller to surface mount.)
- Two mid-wall placed Subs: Rythmik F15HP, one placed in the center of the front wall and one placed in the center of the rear wall
(previously four corner placed Rythmik subs, a single Thiel sub, a single JL Audio, dual HSU, dual Triad, previous EQ provided by SVS AS EQ1, Anti-Mode 8033 Cinema EQ, miniDSP, Audyssey)
SCREEN: - Seymour EN4K acoustic screen (8 feet wide, not diag) 2.37:1
(previously a Stewart Ultramatte 200, a Stewart FireHawk, a Dalite)
AUDIO: - Anthem MRX720 receiver
(previously Marantz SR6010, Yamaha Aventage 1010, Denon 4311, Onkyo pre-pro, Emotiva, Nuforce pre-pro, etc; and previous external amplification via a Mark Levinson/Madrigal/Proceed AMP3, a Parasound 5 channel amp, and a multi-channel Adcom amp) - Amps for Atmos -- currently using
- a class A/B AudioSource and
- a class D amp from Paradigm/Anthem
- Acoustic Treatment: combination of 50/50 absorption/diffusion panels mostly shown in the diagrams but also including the ceiling which not shown in diagrams (GIK and DIY)
SOURCES: - Sony UBP-X800 UHD Blu-Ray Plater, Apple TV gen 5 aka ATV4K, media server
(previously too many to list)
AUTOMATION/CONTROL: - Harmony Hub and Smart Control remote
*Projector setup for the JVC RS4/5/600. ( With custom HDR curves for JVC's and enabling of Dolby Vision.)
----
KEY LESSONS LEARNED:
1) SIX FEET is the minimum depth of a riser. I made mine five feet and it's workable but the back row cannot recline! Okay, so they wouldn't really want to, from a line of sight perspective, but they might want to raise their feet. With five feet of space, they can't. (And seven inches height is really not quite enough for them.)
2) The DOOR should go in the front of the room, if space is tight. There is a whole "dead space" section between the screen and the first row. This is the PERFECT place to have a doorway for entry/exit. Putting the door where I did, next to the seating, means you are limited in seating/walking distance right in the spot where space is at a premium. It has been annoying enough that I have though about adding a door or re-orienting the whole room (but wiring locations and the riser make that a huge task).
3) HVAC is more important to comfort than chairs or anything else in the room. I should have used a mini Split system from the start, instead of trying to rely on other methods.
----
SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT BEGINS HERE (and completes in the next post)
This is how it started. A detached garage on a 1920's house. There was no way we were going to drive a modern car to the back of the lot and into this cramped garage on a daily basis. On the other hand, it was perfectly isolated by a very large infinite air space from the rest of the living space -- and the neighbors!
It started with some sketches in the space...
Yank out the cabinets, and (important!) had the old concrete slab replaced.
ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED #1 : A traditional garage concrete floor is sloped for run off. YOU DONT WANT THAT in a home theater (or, really, any domestic room). But I wasn't smart enough to know that's how they would pour the floor, so I wasn't smart enough to tell them not to.
In the end, the building itself was so unsquare (80+ years of settling will do that) that it wasn't a complete disaster since everything had to be custom measured and plumb was never the same as what gravity wanted, but it was a miss, and a lesson learned --
-- and it would have made the whole "room within a room" easier to keep level, plumb and square.
The good news is that redwood lasts a long time so things were structurally okay -- as in not falling over or down or rotting.
But the electrical was not ideal (it would all have to be replaced). There were plants growing through one wall, due a neighbor's untended vines. There was some nasty insulation, ravaged by time and rodents. Etc. Etc.
Drywall out, and then some framing work. Get by with a little help from friends in these situations....
Killed one of the garage doors and made it a people door.
The general concept was "a room within a room".
It got a little complicated in some places, notably with the cross beams in the rafters of the garage. If we had simply made the roof lower than them, we would have had a room that was under 7 feet in height. NO GOOD.
So we went with a modified concept, where we built around them -- and the end result was that it looks like beams running through the roof of the room. Not bad. Rather proud of that solution, in fact.
Less clearly a win: Instead of just using the max space in the garage, which would have resulted in an essentially square room about 16' on each side, we carved out a space about 12' x 16' to get some rectangular-ness to the space -- thinking it would help with acoustics, and that the space outside the theater space would be a nice ante-rooom -- at first for a little exercise space, and the gear, and later (much later) for a lobby. I call this not clearly a win because I do feel a little space challenged into the room.
Not a win at all: The internal door. Well, the position is not too bad. But I made two follow on mistakes: I did not put the screen wall near the door -- which means the door is near the seats -- which means we that valuable space that could have been used for seats was needed for walking space. And the other mistake with the door: It opens INTO the theater space. Doh! The other direction, while non standard perhaps, would be far more space friendly inside it.
(Follow on lesson learned from earlier: The sloped nature of the concrete slab meant that the door could NOT be hung plumb because it would run into the sloped floor. Ugh! Of course, having it open the other direction would have solved that, too.)
Did I mention this was a dumb way to do the doors. Sure they don't collide and I can move in and out large things. But..... the theater door should open OUT into the foyer.
Some more framing. And other stuff, including painting the old walls (exterior walls) with primer, adding spray foam to seal things, using flashing vapor barrier under the framing, padding places where metal met metal (like the simpson strong ties), etc.
The spray foam was overkill. Later, I added ventilation -- both between the room and foyer and foyer and outdoors. Spray foam sealant was because I thought I'd need to keep it air tight to be sound tight. Turns out, "convoluted path" was just as effective....
And then those pesky ceiling beams. You can see where I would have liked to have put the ceiling.
And that I ran the main ceiling joists at that level.
I need to dig up the photos of what ACTUALLY worked -- to build something almost "around" the old structure, and not touch the new one at all. The contractor I hired to teach me framing and do a significant amount of the heaving lifting and work at this stage thought I was CRAZY at first, but gradually understood to the point where he has great ideas about how to achieve the decoupled goals in this odd situation.
You may wonder why I bothered to try to do it this way, given that I wasn't attached to a living space or sleeping space nor sharing a wall with a neighbor. But my goal was isolation from the outside, in addition to keeping sound from escaping. It mostly worked: Even at full tilt, if you are outside the garage, it just sounds like something faint in the distance. And when inside, if you have nothing playing, you'll not hear the outside world unless something is running a combustion engine very loud and very close.
running wires.
I wanted to achieve a few things:
Future proof as much as possible. So this meant running five or six separate 20amp circuits in the room. That way, I could separate things like the projector from the subwoofer from the space heater from the power recline chair from the electric screen from the lights on a fader from the lights not on a fader from the blah blah blah. No, I didn't plan to have all that stuff in there, but why the not spend an extra 100 bucks to run separate lines from the subpanel in order have options down the road?
I also ran lots of low voltage wire. And I am learning now I should have run even more. I ran drops for 7 locations. In each location I ran thick speaker wire, two coax, one XLR. This means I could run all active speakers in the room. And seven subwoofers. Or all passive speakers. Etc. I ended up using stuff in creative ways, such as I have had a turntable in the room, but I needed to get the line level out from the turntable pre-amp, to the speaker amp in the equipment rack outside the room. Well, there come a couple of XLR drops to the rescue -- balanced turntable audio safely attended to. Or, no matter where a sub should be placed, there's a coax/RCA or XLR output within a few feet.
What else should I have run? Probably twice as much high level speaker cable. It's relatively cheap, and there have been a few times where it would have been interesting to biamp or experiment with ab/ing between speakers, etc. But for the most part, is has worked out well.
There is an "escape valve" in that I have an open attic space above the room, and could run more cables up there and fish them down into the walls without major surgery. But I haven't resorted to that, yet.
And, of course, whenever possible (which was almost everywhere) I ran power and audio in separate places. Typically the power is run around the room laterally, and audio was run in the rafters and then down the wall. That didn't work perfectly with the overhead lights, but I think I managed to have only one 90 degree intersection and that has not proved problematic.
I ran two lighting circuits to two different switches. So far I have just used the can lights with spots in them, and the others remain unused. That's okay. There are also outlets in the ceiling. Definitely one circuit just for the projector. And some near the screen wall -- which would have been useful if I ever wanted a retractable screen -- or moved the projector to another location.
About the projector "circuit". It's actually got a male inlet plug in the equipment area outside the room, that lets me run the projector off a AV grade UPS device. In addition to the obvious benefit of being able to power down the projector nicely if the power to the house goes out, it also regulates the voltage -- which I believe keeps sensitive or finiky gear (read "JVC projector") happier. It may be a placebo.
(Aside: Having the AV grade UPS in there is nice too for firmware updates or not losing recordings on the DVR due to a power hiccup.)
LESSONS LEARNED HERE? Well, for one, run more speaker level wire. Other than that, don't be afraid to terminate! I bought nice face plates etc for the wires, and then told myself "all those extra terminations and connection points are just additional potential points of failure, and might impact the signal a little". What I really should have said is: I'm too lazy to do this part cleanly, now -- and in the future, so I'll forever have slightly ugly wiring....
Well, we'll get to that part of the story, later, as I am embarking on version 2.0 for this room.