Home Theater Forum and Systems banner

PTAaron's Movie Room/Game Room/Bar

74K views 460 replies 28 participants last post by  PTAaron 
#1 · (Edited)
PTAaron's Movie Room/Game Room/Bar - comments welcome!!

Latest news as of May 2016:

Major 2016 updates... Biggest changes start here: http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/home-theater-design-construction/55787-ptaaron-s-movie-room-game-room-bar-28.html

====
Original thread
====

I just thought it would be fun to start a thread here about my basement entertainment area. It isn't just a "home theater" - it is a whole basement project.

I been working on it since we moved in at the beginning of July 2010. My wife and I spent a LONG time trying to find the right house - we love to entertain and have a few other special needs so we had a few requirements: Had to have a bar, had to have a big deck (or space to build one), she wanted a "scrapbooking room" on the main floor since her mother is in a wheelchair and unable to go up/down stairs, I wanted space to build a home theater...

We eventually found this place - the day it was listed we made an offer and we got it! Main floor has a "den" so the wife got her scrapbook room. The basement had a wet bar, pool table, full bath, and another room that oddly had a full wall of mirrors... but I immediately knew it would be my movie room! Only thing keeping it from being the PERFECT entertaining house is the basement is not a walkout - so you have to go down some stairs to get from the grill to the pool table ;)

EDIT: The first 3 pages are kind of a retrospective look at the project... and it is pretty "picture heavy" because I like to document what I'm doing ;)

On to the space!
I am going to keep the first and second posts updated with the newest pictures of the space - so this page will keep changing. The 3rd post and on will outline my journey to get where I am, and beyond ;)

Equipment in the room:
Mitsubishi 73" DLP TV - 73740
Harman Kardon AVR 3600 (as a pre/pro)
Harman Kardon AVR-635 (as the amp)
Speakers: Pioneer SP-FS51-LR front towers, Pioneer SP-C21 Center, Emotiva ERD-1 surrounds, Dayton rears.
Subwoofer2: Elemental Designs A2-300 (x2)
HTPC running OpenELEC and Kodi
Sony BDP-BX58 (S580) Blu-ray Player and SACD Player
Motorola DCX-3200 Cable Box
AppleTV2 (1080p version)
PS4
PS3
PS2
Wii
System controlled with Harmony 1100 and RF extender


Old gear seen in the pictures include:
Toshiba 57h94 CRT RPTV
Harman Kardon AVR 635
Infinity TSS-450 5.1 speaker system

Here is the overall floor plan of my basement - I missed a couple of details like a door on the bathroom and sump room... but everything is to scale and you get the idea.



This was my original layout for the movie room when I first set it up:


...
Added second sub 6/11/16:


...
as of April 2016:




...
pic from 9/8/15:


Before painting the ceiling it looked like this (3/30/12):





.... to be continued ...

Funny - can't edit the post I "reserved" for the bar area pictures... so I'll add this here:

April 2015 - we added a Kegerator to the bar area...


 
See less See more
10
#159 ·
ALMFamily said:
Aaron,

I am looking forward to your feedback on how your rig works for you - I am going to have to start getting gear together for running REW and need to create a shopping list as well. :)

Joe
I'm probably going to need to wait until next week to really use the new rig. I hooked it into my computer last night upstairs in my office to see if I could figure it out and realized that the pre-amp has a headphone output with a 1/8" jack so hooking into the system should be easy with the cables I already have. I forgot about needing a XLR to 1/4" TRS cable for calibrating the soundcard/preamp, and I still need 2 or 4 RCA to 1/4 TRS adapters to hook up the BFD - they are $0.30 from monoprice or $5 from radio shack.

A couple of observations already: the EMM-6 is a great deal at $36 on amazon right now. It comes with its own calibration file that can be plugged right into REW - that is a nice touch. The ART pre-amp seems easy to use - but the purple writing on black background is hard to read on the back of it when it is powered on. The "power" light is very bright, so make sure you figure out what everything does ahead of time.
 
#160 ·
Add to the parts list a XLR male to 1/4" TRS cable for calibration and "loop back" that I picked up at guitar center today...

So that makes the shopping list for anyone that wants to do the same:
1 Dayton EMM-6 microphone
1 ART USB Dual Preamp
1 XLR microphone cable (mic to preamp)
1 1/4" TRS to male XLR cable (preamp to preamp for calibration)
1 1/4" TRS mono to RCA adapter (to run output to AVR)
That should do it...
 
#161 · (Edited)
Started out the day with a goal: hang the pool table light and get it wired before I had to leave to meet friends for a Pistons game... So here is a nice long photo filled story of the day.

Turned the pool table into a work bench and got a plan together with some help from my father in-law - got a late start as usual, so we only had a few hours to work with:


Plan was to run a 2x4 across some floor joists in the center of the table to mount some eye bolts into and to also use as a mounting platform for a box where an outlet would be installed in the ceiling.

While I got to work cutting the 2x4 and measuring for placement Gary figured out how the "mystery switch" in the basement was getting power and how we were going to use it to get power to our new light:


Turns out the "mystery switch" once was apparently a 3rd switch tied into controlling the can lights in the room - it ended up being a 4 wire bundle running into this rat next of wire:

I know it is a bad picture - but there are 3 standard romex lines and 1 5 wire bundle coming together in there...

After a lot of tile removal, wire tracing, swearing at the person that wired things previously, 2 trips to home depot because we got the wrong length eye bolts, and one instance of cutting a wire that was still live (OOPS!) - we got the lights hung!


Then we ran off to the basketball game - I'm not a huge sports fan, but we were given tickets and had access to the VIP lounge with free food and drinks... So we had an AMAZING time! The game ended up being pretty exciting right up until the end where we won!


And finally - a few shots without the stuff on the table:

The can lights cast a bit of a shadow - but dimming them makes things look perfect!



While we worked on the light - my wife organized her vodka ... Can you tell she likes flavored vodka?

(this is less than half of the different vodkas we have... We need help drinking it!)

For comparison - my absinthe collection is much smaller ... Only half a shelf! ;)

 
#162 ·
I can't even begin to describe how helpful an experienced father / father-in-law is for this kind of work - my step-dad has been invaluable for my project.

The light looks great there - excellent work. Hopefully, no one was seriously injured by the sparks flying - or the swearing. ;)

And, :yikes::yikes::yikes::yikes::yikes: - that's a lot of Vodka! Road trip to Michigan inc! ;)
 
#163 ·
No doubt about it... without the help from my father in-law I wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the things I have been documenting here! He does heating and cooling work for a living, but has also been an electrical contractor, plumber, and sheet metal worker - plus my wife is an only child, so needless to say all she has to do is ask nicely and he shows up 20 minutes later :T

No one was injured - the breaker tripped immediately and Gary said "Well **** that wasn't supposed to happen!" What happened was that he had planned to disconnect the "hot" wire from the "rat nest" before we made our Home Depot run, but didn't. When we got back he picked up where he left off - which was about to splice our new light into the old wire... but forgot the important step of disconnecting the hot end!

Any time you're in town... the bar is open ;)

One other quick shot of the light by itself... you can see the outlet and eye bolts I put in...

 
#166 ·
Thanks, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Very nicely done, Aaron! Great to have such a handy father(-in-law) :T

I didn't know there were so many types of wodka :yikes:
Thanks!
Yeah, father in-law is a great guy and we get along really well so it is fun working on these projects with him. My dad is good with this stuff too - but he has so many hobbies and side projects, he just comes over to enjoy the finished product :)

We have a LOT of vodka... we don't drink that much - but we like to keep a fully stocked bar with the option to make just about anything a guest might ask for :T
 
#167 ·
Aaron,

Only suggestion I would make (although it's a tad late now) is to spread the jack chain parrallel with the light to reduce the chance of swing. And if you use four chains you can reduce horizontal swing as well.

As I said, bit late, but......................

Cheers,
 
#168 ·
Dotball said:
Aaron,

Only suggestion I would make (although it's a tad late now) is to spread the jack chain parrallel with the light to reduce the chance of swing. And if you use four chains you can reduce horizontal swing as well.

As I said, bit late, but......................

Cheers,
Good tips. I had thought of that, but once we got started on it I totally forgot ;)
 
#169 ·
Had a chance to really try out the pool table light tonight - I like it A LOT! I ended up just taking out the 2 can light bulbs that were over the table so we could have the rest of the area lit up without the annoying shadows on the table - that seemed to work out really well. I may look into running a separate switch for those 2 cans so I can have them on when we aren't playing and off when we are. Other thought was to get the directional "eyeball" fixtures and direct the light to the poker table and to the side wall... We'll see what ends up being a better option.
In the meantime - here are a couple of low light cell phone pics of the table in use:


Friend taking a shot:
 
#172 ·
I was playing with REW a bit using the graphs I got back in February (before the mirrors came down) to see how the filters worked.
I used the "sub under the TV" graphs for this example... my biggest hole in all the graphs appears to be at 47hz (when looking at subwoofer range of 15-80hz). I'm looking at whether it is worthwhile to boost up the 47hz area or if it is not worth the risk to my sub...





 
#173 ·
I picked up the one final piece I needed to have a truly useful REW setup last night: I got a laptop on eBay for $32! The laptop I own had been broken for the last 5 years - it fell off my lap and broke the power cable connection on the inside. The one I picked up last night it just missing a hard drive and operating system - conveniently I have that from my old computer!
It isn't anything special, but it should be easier than lugging my desktop from my second floor office down into the basement!
 
#176 ·
Although the curve is a lot smoother I wouldn't recommend boosting 47Hz. It is probably better to cut the other frequencies with a well chosen peak with a small Q-value, so that it effects a large area. I would try 30Hz, 63Hz and 80Hz.
 
#177 ·
HTip said:
Although the curve is a lot smoother I wouldn't recommend boosting 47Hz. It is probably better to cut the other frequencies with a well chosen peak with a small Q-value, so that it effects a large area. I would try 30Hz, 63Hz and 80Hz.
Thanks for the input!
Right now in the example I showed there is some pretty significant cutting already happening in those areas - I'm concerned about cutting too much ... Won't that require me to boost the sub level quite a bit?
 
#178 ·
You can't really cut too much. Boosting a single frequency is more harmful. And you're right that you might require to boost the sub level. That is also not a problem. You can raise the level on the sub or in the processor. Both are fine.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top