I've been wanting to post pictures of the home theater my wife and I put together for a couple of months but couldn't find the time. Well, finally I'm able to and hope you all like it. We certainly do. The 13' x 21' room spent the first 10 years in the house as my dedicated music room. I'm one of those dreaded "audiophiles" and spent quite a bit of time just sitting in my chair listening to tunes, mostly on vinyl. Over the last couple of years however I found myself wanting a dedicated theater and spending less and less time listening to music due to other things demanding my time. My wife and I decided last summer that we would go ahead and turn the music room into a theater and set about the task of what we wanted to achieve. She was mainly interested in what it would look like, I was mainly interested in the video and audio portion.
My wife has an interior designer that she has worked with on the rest of our home so she wanted her to come over and talk to us about the theater. That was fine with me as long as certain requirements I had were met. The designer had to make sure that the room was completely light controlled, acoustically I had some requirements for reflection and so forth, the room had to be dark colors, etc. My wife Judi wanted to try and have a classical theater theme to the room, so she and the designer came up with some heavy velvet curtains and trim, very dark blue paint, carpet and lighting accessories that fit the look my wife wanted. I decided that I could live with the curtains acting as an acoustical treatment since the panels I wanted didn't exactly meet the WAF visually. The curtains are serving two purposes. They have blackout cloth sewn to the back to prevent any light from coming through the two windows in the room and they also do a surprisingly good job a taming room reflections. Not perfectly, but I've had no issues with the sound in the room.
As far as the equipment, I spent time with a local dealer who I decided to use and we talked about all my wishes. I gave him a wish list of everything I could think of knowing it would be above my budget, but figuring I could start eliminating things I could live without. I also wanted to use some of the gear I already owned since I'm very happy with it. I ended up getting a good deal on a Pioneer PRO-FPJ1 projector and mated that with a Da-Lite Cinema Vision 2.35:1 screen, 115" diagonal. I added a Panamorph lens with the manual sled about a month after everything was installed. For the sound I kept my Thiel 2 2 speakers for my mains and added a pair of Thiel Power Plane 1.2's for the surrounds and a Thiel SCS4 for the center. Sub work is being handled by a single Epik Sentinel. The mains are being powered by my Classe' Audio CA-300 with the other 3 channels driven by an Emotiva XPA-3 (thanks to this forum). Processor is a Rotel RSP-1570, Blu-Ray is a Pioneer BDP-51FD and a PS3 for my inner child. I also have my CAL Audio Labs CD player and my VPI Scout turntable still in the system for when I'm in a music mood.
Before work began. Room has mostly been stripped.
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Screen wall with the soffit under construction and screen marked.
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Rear wall
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Fast forward to the finished product.
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I hope to add some more images in the coming days to show some more details. I guess I should add a screen shot too.
David
My wife has an interior designer that she has worked with on the rest of our home so she wanted her to come over and talk to us about the theater. That was fine with me as long as certain requirements I had were met. The designer had to make sure that the room was completely light controlled, acoustically I had some requirements for reflection and so forth, the room had to be dark colors, etc. My wife Judi wanted to try and have a classical theater theme to the room, so she and the designer came up with some heavy velvet curtains and trim, very dark blue paint, carpet and lighting accessories that fit the look my wife wanted. I decided that I could live with the curtains acting as an acoustical treatment since the panels I wanted didn't exactly meet the WAF visually. The curtains are serving two purposes. They have blackout cloth sewn to the back to prevent any light from coming through the two windows in the room and they also do a surprisingly good job a taming room reflections. Not perfectly, but I've had no issues with the sound in the room.
As far as the equipment, I spent time with a local dealer who I decided to use and we talked about all my wishes. I gave him a wish list of everything I could think of knowing it would be above my budget, but figuring I could start eliminating things I could live without. I also wanted to use some of the gear I already owned since I'm very happy with it. I ended up getting a good deal on a Pioneer PRO-FPJ1 projector and mated that with a Da-Lite Cinema Vision 2.35:1 screen, 115" diagonal. I added a Panamorph lens with the manual sled about a month after everything was installed. For the sound I kept my Thiel 2 2 speakers for my mains and added a pair of Thiel Power Plane 1.2's for the surrounds and a Thiel SCS4 for the center. Sub work is being handled by a single Epik Sentinel. The mains are being powered by my Classe' Audio CA-300 with the other 3 channels driven by an Emotiva XPA-3 (thanks to this forum). Processor is a Rotel RSP-1570, Blu-Ray is a Pioneer BDP-51FD and a PS3 for my inner child. I also have my CAL Audio Labs CD player and my VPI Scout turntable still in the system for when I'm in a music mood.
Before work began. Room has mostly been stripped.
Screen wall with the soffit under construction and screen marked.
Rear wall
Fast forward to the finished product.
I hope to add some more images in the coming days to show some more details. I guess I should add a screen shot too.
David
