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Ellis Family Retirement HT: Go big or go home

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retirement
126K views 855 replies 38 participants last post by  NBPk402 
#1 ·
In about a month I plan on breaking ground on starting to convert our 2 car garage to a dedicated home theater. The garage is already dry walled and we will be ripping out the drywall on the walls and ceiling to see what we have to work with. The garage is 23' 4" long, 19' wide with a 9' ceiling. We have a door on the backside of the garage that leads out to our pond, a water heater, and furnace are in the wall right next to the door, and these need to be taken into consideration for the dimensions of the theater.

We will be extending the front of the garage out 5' to enclose our front channel speakers (3 La Scalas (heavily modified) , 2 Heresy HIPs and 1 of 2 Danley DTS-10 subs).. The goal is to hit 115db @ 10hz with a low power amp. I am trying to cut down our electricity bill as much as possible so a friend of mine is building me a 10 channel "D" class chip amp that will put out no more than 30wpc... Since all my speakers are 98 db or greater efficiency I figure this should be more than enough power to listen at reference levels.

The walls will be built as a double 2x4 wall with fiberglass insulation, OSB, and 2-3 layers of sheet rock with green glue. The ceiling will be 2 layers of sheet rock and maybe OSB if the ceiling can support the added weight of the OSB. Making the room as quiet as possible is a must as it is right below our Master Bedroom and I like to watch movies late at night.

We will be running 12 gauge Monoprice cable in conduit for all 9 channels. We are using Monoprice Redmere cables for all HDMI. The equipment rack location will be on the same wall as the Heater and water heater.

Are the room dimensions good for a HT or could they be reduced in some areas to get a better setup?

I will try and get some drawings up so this setup will make more sense. Any suggestions are welcome as I want to do this right the first time.

Parts list:
USB electrical outlets for power recliners
5/8" drywall (2 layers)
Green Glue 5 gallon buckets

Specs:
walls 24" on center


Finished pics...













Looking from the HT to the pond entrance.


Looking from the HT entrance to the Skimmer.


Entrance to the HT.



Here you can see the door.



New seats. (have been moved to the front row)


We now have our HT door sign temp mounted (it will be flush mounted soon). I also have a Panamorph UH-480 lense arriving next week. I am hoping I can get more brightness, and not have to worry about changing aspect ratios in some movies.


Daytime...



Night time (color is different as it is set to randomly change the LED colors)...
 
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#418 ·
How do i know how much (or if at all) I can boost the low end with my Yamaha p7000s?
 
#416 ·
I will sell the FBD, and use the extra MiniDSP 2x4 that I have. :T


Interesting thing... Today my Yamaha P7000s died (only had it in service since the beginning of July too). I unplugged it, and let it sit for a while and plugged it back in, and it is dead... no lights, nada, nothing at all.

Good thing it is under warranty. :)

So since it was dead I decided to use one of my P2500s amps for the subs for now, and I found out something interesting...

When I was using the P7000s I had to turn the gain up full on one channel, and 3/4 on the other channel to get Audyssey to calibrate the subs. When I hooked up the P2500s it calibrated both of them at about 7/8 level equally! I had originally thought that the P7000s was doing that due to one sub in front of the room, and the other being behind me, but I now believe it was defective. The other issue with the P7000s was a hum... The P2500 has one but it is much lower.

I will call Yamaha in the morning to see about getting the P7000s repaired.
 
#417 ·
I called Yamaha this morning, and explained the problem, and they are sending me the info for a local repair shop. I have to say that the person I was dealing with was one of the most pleasant that I have ever had to deal with for a repair issue. No reading of scripts like when I had to deal with Epson... Just told him the problem, and it was a done deal. :T
 
#419 ·
On a different note... A few weeks ago we had a power outage and ever since my Insteon Lighting was working off and on until it stopped communicating period with the ISY994i. I ordered a replacement ISY thinking that was the problem but it didn't solve it. I got a new modem under warranty, and that wasn't it either... I finally called Universal Devices about the ISY. The Tech had me run through a few things and came to the conclusion that it was electrical noise. He told me to unplug everything, and then re-plug them in one by one until I find a device that makes it stop working again. I was dreading that and tried a noise filter and re routing my power cords in the rack to no avail. A friend of mine came over and said if it is noise I should try wrapping the cords around a magnet... I then remembered back to my Audiophile days where I had used TDK magnets to eliminate noise. I dug into my junk, and fount about a dozen of them... I put one on each cord that was going into my UPS (including the UPS power cord), and decided to try it again. It worked! Now I can get back to working on my room again. :flex:
 
#421 ·
Yeah, I am hoping my Contractor completes his job this weekend and finishes the hallway, and HVAC part so I can continue with the everything else. :T
 
#422 ·
Sorry - been swamped. Try bumping it up just a little bit and see if the response follows. If not, then they're likely modal nulls and you won't fix them just with a level adjustment. You'll need to address one of the 2 cancelling waves via room treatment. Or, play with the sub position and see if you can gain a little there, or both.
 
#423 ·
Thanks Bryan
 
#424 ·
If I move my 4" absorber panels to the ceiling and make new 4" panels for the walls...

What would happen if I put pegboard on the front side of the panels and then wrapped them with GOM? Would that allow me to use more panels (to help with the bass traps) without hitting the highs too much? My thinking is that the pegboard would allow some high frequencies to be absorbed and reflect most of them... While at the same time absorbing some of the bass.
 
#425 ·
If you want to not hit the highs, use a membrane of some sort. Mass will determine the cutoff - FSK, Pond Liner, or even MLV will cut off progressively lower.
 
#426 ·
I take it that I should not put any membrane on first reflection points, correct? If I use a membrane (not on first reflection points) can I do all the walls with 4" thick Roxul, or will that still be too much? Is this a good idea?
 
#427 ·
Reflection points need to be full range. I would not cover all the wall surface with anything. Too much. You need to know what your target decay time curve should be, address the things you know you need to do (front wall, reflections, and broadband bass control), then see what you have left and balance it out accordingly.
 
#428 ·
So basically... I should make my front, and rear wall panels, and first reflections for ceiling, and walls, and then measure?
 
#430 ·
I will be using 6" of Roxul 60 on the whole rear wall... I was thinking of angling the panels in the rear corners with the same panels that are on the rear wall... Is that enough? The front wall will have 3" of Roxul R60 wall to wall... Do I need to build out some more for the corners too?
 
#431 ·
Use a membrane on the rear wall - don't want to kill your surround field. 6" flat on a wall on a good day might do 70-75Hz leaving 2 octaves untreated. 6" Straddling a corner at 45 degrees will probably do 45ish.
 
#432 ·
When I straddle the corners... Should I leave the space open behind the panels or fill it with more materials?
 
#434 ·
:T
 
#435 ·
Today I had a little time so I worked on the Bi-Amp rack... Here are a few pics of it.




 
#436 ·
Went to the Dr. the other day for my yearly checkup... My Dr. said i am deficient in vitamin D. From what i understand that is from a lack of sunlight... Looks like i need to start getting out of the HT more often. Today i am going to head over to the Cynosport World Championship Dog Competition where my wife is competing with 2 of our Border Collies...
http://www.usdaa.com/article.cfm?newsID=2384
 
#438 ·
Thanks,
One of our dogs finished 6th in the finals today, and the other finished 6th in the semi finals today (she will be competing in the finals on Sunday). :T
 
#440 ·
Todays project will be covering the 2 doors in the hallway with GOM. I will also be installing the weatherstripping, and hopefully get my "Man Cave" sign installed... I am waiting for the power cords to arrive for lighting the sign, and hallway as it is pitch black in the hallway. Once I have that done I have a few panels left to make for the hallway, and then make the ceiling fabric panels.
 
#441 ·
Still haven't gotten the hallway done as my eye doctor is trying different contact lenses on me and my vision is still messed up. I do however have a new Peerless AV rack arriving (hopefully) Tuesday night. It is a 30U rack with casters (which will be not be installed). This will hopefully hold the following pieces:
AVR
3 Yamaha amps
PS3
Xbox 360
Cisco Gigabit switch
HDDVD player
Monster power filter

My INUCs, MiniDSPs, T chip amps, TV tuners, and ISY 994i will be attached 2 2 2x4 panels and hung on the wall. I am going to build a false wall that will hide all of the equipment, and ventilated with GOM. The GOM panels will be removable for easy access.

I am thinking of moving the NAS to a closet since it is the noisiest piece, and it is not needed in the HT room.

I will try and get some pics of the new amp setup when I get it installed... Currently i am working on getting my NAS reconfigured with my 2 additional 6TB NAS hdds. I am trying to store all my data differently on the hdds (not striped), and this is going to take a while since I am moving 10TB of data around.
 
#442 ·
Today I worked on the ISY994i... I was able to get some scenes completed, and figured out how to integrated some dusk to dawn programming too. I now have a Scene controller switch set up to (Home Theater only):
A: Turn on just the Spot lights
B: Turn on all the lights to 100%, and turn on the Pond Spot lights if after dusk (pond is the entrance to the HT).
C: Turn off the Spots, turn on the sub amp, and dim all the appropriate lights for watching a movie.
D: Turn on all the lights after a Movie is over.
E: Turn off all the lights, amps, and dim the hall lights and pond lights for 4 minutes till off (this gives enough time to exit to the area)

Next I am going to install a Insteon door sensor for the entrance to the pond so I can have the lights go on "if it is after sunset and they are not already on".

I was actually surprised as to how easy it was for me since I am not a programmer, and this is all pretty new to me.
 
#443 ·
Question:

I keep looking at the baffle wall possibility for my HT...

What would happen if I was to use the 3" Roxul on the wall behind the AT screen, move my AT screen back to 4' from the rear wall (which will allow me to watch at 195" scope), and then build another wall with acoustic panels made of Roxul R60 as a baffle wall with the screen in front of the baffle wall?

Would this make it a better bass trap since it would have 3" on the rear wall, and another 3" for a baffle wall with a 4' cavity?

Would it be better to just do the baffle wall?

Are their any disadvantages to a baffle wall?

Advantages?
 
#445 ·
We have the Screen up and it is within 1' from either side wall (we will have panels wrapped with Velvet covering the 1' area that is left)... So you are saying just do the real back wall with the 3", and cover it with the black material, and call it a day?
 
#447 ·
OK... As soon as the Roxul 60 arrives I will put one layer on the real wall behind the front speakers, and 2 layers behind the 2nd row of seating against that wall. :T
 
#448 ·
Just got my Roxul in... They shorted me by one bundle and it was damaged. :( I negotiated the price due to the damage and got it for $44 a bundle (7 bundles). They are ordering my missing bundle and hopefully I will have it by the beginning of December (orders come from Canada for the Roxul 60).

This will be for the single layer behind the screen, and also for the double layer behind the second row seating.
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I also received my new Peerless rack... So over the next few days, I will be dis assembling the old rack and installing the new rack, making the frames for the wall behind the AT screen (2x4s), and then ordering the 1/2 x6 pieces for the rear wall frames. I will then be covering the wall behind the screen with Black Commando Cloth, and the rear wall with black, and, or Blue GOM.
 
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