Tanner Ridge Cinema Construction Thread

[YW84U]

I very much appreciate the positive responses to the thread! I posted it here in the hopes that it might help someone looking for ideas for their rooms or construction info. Goodness knows, I'm going to be leaning on everyone here for as much help as I can get as I tackle the tweaks and audio/video side of things!! I'm by no means an expert on any of this, but am more than willing to help or answer any questions I can about what I've learned so far (I made lots of boo boos, and whoever renos the room in 20 years will find lots of bloodstains on the lumber ).

It started out as a rather 'innocent' project, that went way farther than I had originally intended (200% over budget, year and a half longer than planned, fancier than my napkin drawing....). It sure was easy to get caught up in it - even the Mrs was saying "In for a penny, in for a pound!" when it came to forging ahead Somehow, I really don't think it will ever be 'completely finished'.......

John Simpson wrote:

The "mirror method" eh? I'll have to look into that. One question: do you find the shadow box and stage setup to be beneficial? My aim to is to better the commercial cinemas, and that could be a way to go...

I found the mirror method to find the first reflection points quite handy and simple - I was always working by myself , so what I did was used a table lamp with a 60W bulb, and placed it in each of the seating positions. I then ran a mirror along the walls and ceiling until the light would 'shine' onto each of the various speaker locations. Moved the mirror and marked with painter's tape (around the edges of the mirror to ensure enough coverage) - you can kinda see where I was going with this in the following photo:



The panels were originally quite high, so I turned my mains upside down to put the drivers lower to ear level (thereby dropping the two outer areas to about where the middle tape marks are). This made the panel placement a lot more uniform and narrowed my coverage area as well. If you have help, you can use a helper with a flashlight at ear height to shine onto the the mirror for you - would make things a lot simpler!

I find the stage/shadowbox definitely not critical, but it was beneficial to me; IMHO it brings a bit more of the 'theater' feel to the space, in that there's no mistake as to the 'purpose of the room' when you walk in. I do like having the fronts hidden from view - it makes it a lot harder to try and discern where the sound/image is 'coming from'. Plus, there's no visual distraction from the screen image, and creates a great place to hide acoustic treatments, IR repeaters and such. Also adds a bit of a 'buffer zone' to keep back those inquisitive guests that want to touch the screen

If you have the room/budget/time to do one, I found it to be one of the most fun and rewarding parts of the build! (Well, maybe except for the 300 or so kerf cuts with the circular saw in order to bend the 2x6 for the stage front )

Cheers,

[DIYHT1]

Really Nice room, congrads!

[YW84U]

Well, the sound tweaking has kinda taken a back seat for the time being......but of interest, is that it would appear that the IR-543 used for controlling the dimmers has passed away....it developed a faint 'buzz' inside the unit, and is flaky when sending X10 codes to the dimmers Time to RMA it back to SH and get a replacement. Fortunately, I've still got an old X10 RF keypad so at least I still don't have to get up!!

On the tech front, I managed to stumble across a skookum deal -



wandered into Futureshop and saw their 'Table of Woes' freshly stocked with DVD players. Hidden away underneath a pile of open box players sat a Toshiba HD-XA2, with no price tag. I queried the sales guy as to 'how much', and he said he didn't know and had been hiding it until the manager could come up with something. He said it was a really old unit and I should get one of the A3's instead for a few bucks more..... I went back today for curiosity's sake, and ended up negotiating it for $289! They all thought I was crazy for wanting a 2nd generation model with all of the new A20's and 30's out......

So far, compared against the A2, the build quality on this thing is far better, and from the limited testing done earlier, I am impressed with the upconversion of the Reon chip. I'm sure that despite however the format war ends, I've still ended up with a great player for all of my SD content . The only negative thus far is the bejezus bright blue light at the bottom of the unit - lit up the whole theater! After a round of window tint, I settled for a strip of black electrical tape to tame the beam.

Back to tweaking....

[Blaser]

This is a wonderful HT One of the best I have seen so far...

[YW84U]

Update time I guess...

I've abandoned the audio tweaking for now...been busy at other stuffs . However, this weekend, I've decided to start finishing off my rack. I always loved those MA racks with the custom templates, but alas, that won't work within my budget.

So, I trotted down to the metal store, and picked up some 1/16" aluminum plate for $30 (DIY is affordable!)



I figure, may as well start from the top down, so first on deck is the Sony AVR for the bass shakers



I used my new DeWalt jigsaw (Xmas gift from the WAF), along with some flat files, power sanders and lots of patience, and ended up with one of these:



Sorry for the bad pic, but the camera fogged up a bit from being outside . Now that I have a decent fit (couple thousandths here and there), I will primer the plate and coat it with satin black auto trim paint to match the moldings. I imagine this will take up a good part of the week to get all of the components cut out. I will use some screws with rack washers to finish off the sides and secure them to the 3/4 wood I left exposed near the moldings.

More to follow.....

[Bent]

I'd have a million accolades for you regarding everything you've done so far, an absolutely stunning job with exceptional attention to detail - but the one that stands out foremost in my mind is his theater is 12.5 feet wide... so will mine be.
I will use this one as my inspiration.


I'm impressed on how you've maintained a strict budget and achieved champagne results, congrats.

[YW84U]

Thanks Bent ! Yipppers, I guess I have champagne tastes on a beer budget!! Come to think of it, more like a Kool-Aid budget

Some more progress today -
Panel #1 is now complete A nice rub with some steel wool brought out any scuffs from my manufacturing process



A coat of primer, and a couple of satin black



And installation - I used phillips drywall screws, with a nickel #8 finishing washer on each mounting hole



So far, so good I think. However, I am still as yet undecided whether I want to keep the finish washers nickel, or black them out.

Anyone have any thoughts? I've seen both varieties in other rack threads, and I'm on the fence which way to go with the washers as there doesn't seem to be a 'right way'.......

Can't wait till I get to cut plain old rectangular pieces

Cheers,

[Rodny Alvarez]

Anyone have any thoughts? I've seen both varieties in other rack threads, and I'm on the fence which way to go with the washers as there doesn't seem to be a 'right way'.......

NICE!

I think black washers would look better to me!

[Big Worm]

Very nice!

[Prof.]

Very nice indeed...

Definitely black..Anything bright and shiny will stand out and catch your eye when projecting..

[John Simpson]

Looks really good Tom! I'd offer to marry you, but my wife would complain about lack of bed space

Do you find those fill panels reduce airflow?

BTW, what is that wallplate for on the right of your rack? I'm on the hunt for some quality plates and that looks the goods.

[YW84U]

Hi John,

Ha! Bed space would be the least of your concerns....I am told I apparently snore AND hog all the blankets

As for the panels reducing airflow - I admit it....I haven't finished yet (sidetracked), but I imagine that it will have an impact. I'm planning on making vent panels for the lower unused rack area just to ensure that I leave a little breathing room. I think that since the rack heat can rise via convection up into the soffit where the vent/outside exhaust fan is, even running without rack vents should still be okay - there seems to be a good number of air exchanges in the closet already (it also pulls air in through the louvered bifold entry door area).

Wall plates - they are Leviton QuickPorts, Decora style - they come in various number of keystone hole configurations with snap-in modules for speakers, RCA, and such. However, they are all white! I used a satin black auto trim paint (same for rack) that adheres really well and is durable, and finished it off with a generic stainless plate from the local box store.

Oh yeah - as for the nickel trim washers - I think I'll leave them as is for now until I populate the whole rack and stand back and have a looky.....maybe they will help offset/assimilate my rather 'silver' BFD into the blackness

Cheers,

[YW84U]

Okay, I'm off the fence now

nickel, black, nickel.....

After putting on another panel or two, it became markedly clear that black was the 'new black'. Thanks everyone for their input!





So far, so good on the panels - I'm quite happy with the way they're turning out (and at far less cost that the MA RSH series ). I hope to get them finished up this week.

I reinstalled the replacement IR543, and low and behold, it is flaky just as the last one. This leads me to believe that either the X10 part of the dimmers is not working properly, or that there is some new undiscovered noisemaker on my powerline

The Insteon side of things has been bulletproof, though. Time to really consider upping it to either an IRLinc or an ISY 99ir. The ISY would be complete overkill, but at least gives me the option to expand the automation later on.

Arrgh!!

[thxgoon]

Wow, nice work! Very professional looking. Some day...

I couldn't help but notice the number of filters set for your BFD. Are those all for your subs?

[Bent]

Fort X-10 signal strength, I use a Elk ESM-1(I think) signal strength meter, it cost about 50 bucks, and lets you know if a signal is true X-10 or not, it's good for trouble shooting, cause you can use it to help find out sources of noise.
As well, it helps find "signal suckers", such as power supplies for computers, microwave ovens, etc. You just turn off a breaker, send a command and check the signal strength - then turn that breaker on, turn another off - send another signal, and repeat.
I use an Appilied Digital Ocelot programmable logic controller with a PSC-05 powerline interface for X-10 control of my 3 Leviton DHC scene dimmercircuits and have 100 percent reliability after doing some signal strength issue troubleshooting.

[Bent]

I believe he's using one bank of filters for his tactile tranducers.

[YW84U]

thxgoon wrote:

I couldn't help but notice the number of filters set for your BFD. Are those all for your subs?

Bent was on the money! The top bank of filters is the 45hz XO for the bass shakers, and the bottom is for the sub. I suppose I can get away with far less filters, but I've yet to take the time and tinker with them properly

Bent: as for the X10, it was 99% reliable upon first install, but then suddenly dropped off. I have all 3 dimmers programmed with an X10 address, as well as each one is also linked with a KPL via Insteon. What happened, was only one dimmer (screen cans) would reliably respond to the IR543, and the others would not....sometimes, a command for light 3 would not work, then a command issued right afterwards to light 1 would cause light 3 to come on. Very inconsistent! I thought it was the 543, as it seemed to develop a slight 'buzzing noise' from inside. With the new one, I noticed it buzzes as well, and has a slight 'hot electronic' odor .

I did factory resets of all the switches, re-linked them, and the behavior remains. I also tried an RF keypad with an x10 module, and still note the same behavior (light 2 100% accuracy, 1 and 3 barely respond). Different housecodes were also tried but to no avail....nothing changed electrically in the house, and the 543 is on the same circuit as the dimmers with only about 10 feet of wire between them. Quite strange! It could be that two of the three dimmers are not happy x10 customers, or that now the switches are broken in, that they have evolved into x10 signal suckers....

However, the KPL using Insteon has been bang-on for the entire install, which leads me to believe that the protocol works better in my situation. My debate is that the IRLinc at $99 and being released (Soon?) may provide a better Insteon-based solution for the theater lights....but....I like to dabble with HA, and have been thinking of deploying more Insteon switches in other locations in the house sometime down the road. If that is the case, I think the ISY with an extended PLM may be the way to go. I don't want to drop $99 on the IRLinc, and then spend more on the ISY later thus making the IRLinc redundant (the ISY is only a couple hundred more). The other option I'm considering is to get a PLM, software, and IRLinc to perform the duties - but I'm not sure that there's software yet able to deal with the IRLinc, leaving me to revert back to X10 triggers for Insteon events for now...

Part of me just thinks that I'm better in the long run to stick to only Insteon, and take a good look at the ISY. I'm hesitant, seeing as the extended PLM is new, and I don't want to risk having to replace it as they work out any firmware bugs.....

Decisions, decisions

[Bent]

I hate to say it, but I've heard that INsteon isn't quite as reliable as they would have you believe.

Is it tough to configure your insteon dimmers as straight X-10 dimmers to see if they work that way?
Then, do Insteon dimmers respond to scene commands?

[strykr]

Wow, thats pretty much the same idea I am making for my home theatre room. Once I move into somewhere bigger...

Wow you have a VHS player in your equipment rack in a room that amazing, personally I would've hidden that thing or already transferred everything over to my HTPC... which I have almost done already.