I recently moved into a new place and have slowly been setting things up after work. I decided to take the rest of the week off and get the movie room set up along with all the other junk I have to unpack.
I've taken a few pictures along the way to keep myself motivated
The room started off looking like this, which was a bit depressing...
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...lo/SettingUpBefore.JPG
After getting things unpacked, I started with the screen setup. I decided that I wanted to try a new method of attaching the border to the screen. I used that white piece of foam to but out big "L" brackets that I glued onto the pink foam panels. The border essentially stays on due to friction and I also put on some cardboard to make sure things stayed attached even if things got a little looser over time.
In my previous setup I was never really happy with how the border was about half and inch away from the screen. It eventually started to sag since they were independently attached to the walls rather than to each other and the screen. I hope this setup will be much more stable over time.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...lo/SettingUpScreen.JPG
I had a bit of an "Oh Sh!t" moment when I was figuring out how high everything was going to be vs. the height of the ceiling. I hadn't even thought of it when looking at different places, but I was used to higher ceilings at my last place. These are 8 foot ceilings and I literally had about 1/2" of vertical height to spare based on the size of my components.
Flexy rack is 24" high, then a 2.5" high auralex pad for the center, and the center is 12" itself.
96 - 24 - 2.5 - 12 = 57.5"
My screen with border is 57" high. It's not the end of the world if the center channel overlaps with the bottom of the screen, but it was really close.
When I first did the calculation, I forgot that I only used 24" threaded rods for the flexy rack and put in 36" into the calculation. I freaked out for about 30 seconds before remembering that my flexy rack doesn't use the standard sized parts
I needed that extra 1/2" to get the screen over the nails that are holding it up.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...o/SettingUpScreen2.JPG
Going has been slow since then.
These are a day apart and looking at them both, not much is different between them
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...sDAjello/SettingUp.JPG
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...DAjello/SettingUp2.jpg
Getting that flexy rack together and those few hundred pounds of equipment back on them wore me out for a day or two though I guess.
It turns out that my gf's couch, which was originally destined to reside in the spare bedroom upstairs cannot make the turn at the top of the stairs to get in there.
Decisions....
The choice ended up to either
- Give up most of the dining room (which was to be our computer room) to keep this couch in it
OR
- Figure out how to put it in the living room (which we call the "movie room"... the master bedroom is the new "living room" and the 2nd bedroom is now the "bedroom" )
So, I decided to give in and put both a futon and a couch in the 13'x16.5' movie room.
With three walls that could viably be used as the screen wall, I chose the one pictured above (this was decided before I put the screen together, but I figured I'd mention it since there's a couch picture coming up and it reminded me of the compromise that shaped the room as it is today).
So, I could have done a few configurations with two seating areas in the room, but I decided that 2 rows of seating facing the screen (one behind the other) was best.
That meant breaking out the second pair of bass shakers and installing them on the couch.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...DAjello/SettingUp3.JPG
After some troubleshooting, I eventually figured out that one of my really cheap RCA cables I use for this had broken during the move. Both the futon and the couch are shaking as expected now.
I then decided I wanted to get the DONE, so today is my first "get this DONE" day off work.
Things went rather well today and things are basically hooked up as they should be.
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...DAjello/SettingUp4.JPG
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...DAjello/SettingUp5.JPG
A couple choices made:
2nd row (couch) is on some temporary risers to see how that goes. They're only a few inches tall, but I needed at least an in ch to help clear the bass shakers and hopefully that extra height gives enough clearance for movie watching. I haven't set the projector up yet, but it looks good from just looking at the blank view. The speakers seem to be mostly unobstructed too.
After one of my surround speakers took a tumble in the last place, I've been rather wary of mounting them. If I were to do it, I'd be using some substantial hardware for the task. That's well... frowned upon based on the lease for the new place, so I'm testing out my spare speaker stands for them for now. I haven't tried out how this sounds, but I'm hoping it's fine.
Subwoofer placement - I was going to have a lot more options before, but now I'm pretty limited due to having two rows of seating in here. I'm hoping both up front near the front speakers works well enough.
Concerns:
Last night I sneezed in the room. I'm not concerned about my health, but rather the noise it made. That's about as close to swearing I've been in a while. I need some acoustic treatments in here. I spent 5 minutes after that sneezing episode assessing the situation with some finger snapping and making random vocal noises
It's the left and right wall of the room, which makes a lot of sense considering they're totally devoid of anything that would diffuse or absorb any sound bouncing between them.
On the list of things to do is getting my room darkening curtains up the window opposite the screen. I'll only use about half of the curtain set for this, so I may end up just seeing if attaching the spare curtains to the wall is enough to take the edge off the blank wall acoustic problems.
Hopefully Audyssey MultEQ can help a little too. I'll get to hear what kind of difference it can make in a room like this at least.
What's next:
Well I like to buy new stuff, so what's on the "to buy" list?
1. I assume I'm going to need some acoustic treatments for this room. 95% sure this will be a DIY option. From the results from my other DIY projects, I'm feeling more comfortable about taking on another project. I've been wanting to do this anyway, but this is the first room that I've been in that obviously needed it to my ears. It's also the first one where I actually have some open walls to mount them (which is probably why I actually need them )
2. New projector... my Panasonic AE900U has served me well, but it has several issues with it that are driving me crazy. These are probably the kind of things that most people might not even notice, but I know they're there and it's really distracting to me. Hopefully shortly after CEDIA there will be a great option for me in the $2000 range that offers a feature set close to the Panasonic AE3000U has today.
3. Subwoofer equalization... unless I were to co-locate my subs (which I do not want to do), standard Audyssey isn't really cutting it. From the basic investigating I've done on the SVS AS-EQ1, that seems like what I really need to get to get both my subs playing nicely.
http://www.svsound.com/products-parts-subeq.cfm
After my previous experience with Audyssey and trying to get both subs working correctly, I really know that the results aren't where I want them to be. At the same time, $700-$800 is a lot to spend on subwoofer optimization. A few years ago I almost got a Behringer Feedback Destroyer to try to correct the dual subwoofer issues manually, but I decided against it.
The AS-EQ1 seems like a much more effective and easy option to use. At the same time, I'm wondering how far we area away from receivers with dual independent subwoofer audyssey correction built in. I got my Onkyo 876 for less than the price of the AS-EQ1. It might be more cost effective to just wait until a new receiver or pre-pro comes out with the AS-EQ1's capabilities built-in rather than buying a standalone unit to just do subwoofer equalization for $700-$800. I believe there are some high end units that do this already, so it may be coming down the line as a feature shortly?
Ok, this is a long post for the "pictures" thread, but there you have it.
Maybe for reference, previous setups:
June 2009
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Y...howsDAjello/Movies.JPG
April 2007
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/April2007.JPG
January 2006
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/Jan2006.jpg
July 2005
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/July2005.JPG
January 2005
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/Jan2005.JPG
November 2004
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/Nov2004.jpg
2002
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/YOyoYOhowsDAjello/Aug2002.JPG