Thanks guys, I built this 7.1 system up from practically scratch, and it sounds pretty damn good. All in all I spent about 6-7k, which includes modifications to the living room including turning the fireplace into an AV rack.

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DrP Wrote: Kaisergrendel Wrote:Thanks guys, I built this 7.1 system up from practically scratch, and it sounds pretty damn good. All in all I spent about 6-7k, which includes modifications to the living room including turning the fireplace into an AV rack. I don't know if anyone noticed, but my 5-disc collector's edition ID Disk is lit up and sitting on the front right speaker Wow, looks awesome. Looks like you spent a lot of effort, time, (and money) to make this a really great looking/performing home theater. True congrats! I not only like the equipment setup but I like the general look of the room and the color scheme. Very tasteful. Do you have any pictures of the room build, I am wondering how you did the work of converting the fireplace into an AV rack? What kind of room lighting do you have, it seems from the shadows that you have multiple ceiling light sources... once again, it compliments the room nicely. I bet that collector's edition ID disk looks even cooler when it's lit up in the dark. Very nice!

Thanks, I think it looks a little ratty in the current configuration because of the retrofit, but thanks for the kind words.

I'm working on a timelapse video of the refit and will take some extra photos once I've reverted the setup to 5.1+HDTV to show you exactly what I've done

DrP Wrote:I think it really looks nice (and not "ratty" at all). One question. If you have a 7.1 setup now, why would you want to go back to 5.1? There are quite a few movies with 7.1 soundtracks now (including Tron:legacy) and I find that even with 5.1 encodes, the 7.1 setup gives a better soundstage.

Thanks, I've cleaned up the place and will make some final adjustments before taking another picture, then you'll be able to see what my original plan was.

Well a few reasons. While it pains me to give up the enhanced envelopment of 7.1, the room won't allow it. I have to move the couch out off the wall to provide space for the speakers to operate, losing over a foot of room as wide as the couch is. Even more room lost when I have to organize stands for the large bookshelves that become the side surrounds in 7.1. That space between the couch and wall is hard to reach and difficult to clean, and the entire space is a bit convoluted and constricting in this arrangement. With 5.1, I still get surround sound, and everyone is happy with the way the room looks.

DrP Wrote:It's always a push and pull thing with squeezing speakers/equipment/furniture into a room. I can see your point. You can always consider buying some small rear wall mountable speakers. These would not take up so much space and you wouldn't have to give up the 7.1 setup (although larger speakers would give better performance obviously).

My current ones are small enough to mount on the wall, and I have considered it, however they'd have to fire straight down the surface of the wall to reach the listeners. I imagine that would be more harmful to the sound stage and proper localisation than not having them at all.

DrP Wrote:Prior to building my home theater room I had the same space problem. Having everything in a small room made it very tight (too tight). It was not until I had the 500 sq ft room to spread everything out and the number of speakers became a no-issue.

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New Hardware and setup

I recently changed my equipment setup slightly. I moved the amp to the right and power condition to the left side. I was able to use much shorter interconnects from the preamp to the amp so hopefully that would further minimize any distortion.


I also recently purchased a Pionner Elite CLD-97 Laserdisc player so I have that set up and calibrated now. It's fun watching some older movies in this format. I have somewhere around 120 movies.



Unfortunately, the laserdisc player is too big to fit on the inside of my audio rack so I had to do some re-arranging. I moved my media center onto the table and put the player on the top shelf. I recently bought a turntable that I plan to use in this system so I'm going to have to make room for this as well. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do just yet... maybe the turntable on top of the laserdisc player,... or media center (computer) on the floor and turntable in its place...?

You can check out all the pictures at:
http://www.blu-ray.com/community/gallery.php?member=invenio
I'll post more pictures as things develop.... and they always do....
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I usually watch it on my Laptop, with the earphones plugged in.

Whenever I go to bed & fancy watching a movie, I plug my Laptop into the electric socket (because it just drains the life out of the battery otherwise! :/), plug in the earphones and switch off the light.
Then I can just lie in bed and watch any movie I want.

Kaisergrendel-
Wow, the room came out looking awesome. Very clean lines and elegant. That looks like a pretty awesome place to turn down the lights, pop in the T:L blu-ray and get lost in the digital world for 2 hours! Congrats.

Exodus-
I sometimes watch movies on my laptop as well, but usually when i'm traveling. I was away in London a few weeks ago and I was "rocking" the earbuds and computer while in bed!


As a side note. I didn't feel completely happy with my equipment setup so I just purchased two new audio racks for my system. I plan to replace the rack I have now and move the table that I have my media center on to the other side of the room. I am hoping this will give me more space and will also allow my receiver and laserdisc player to fit on a lower shelf. The new racks are 5 shelves like the one I have now but have smaller spacing so the total height for both will only be around 3 ft. With 2 of these it will give me 10 shelves so I think that will last me awhile. I think it will make playing LP's and laserdiscs easier as it won't be so high. Also, I think it will simply look much better in the room. I should receive these in the mail in the next 2 weeks. I'll post some pics when i'm all done.

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Kaisergrendel Wrote:Thanks DrP, it took me about 5 months to set up and I'm quite proud of it. I have a video of the build process coming up so you'll get to see more of what I did I got the same PS3 theme as you did - couldn't resist xD I think you're going in the right direction with the new racks, it's looking a little over-encumbered. Where will the PC go? The case can definitely go on the floor since you don't need to access it as much. I might install the LCD on a wall-mounted arm to free up even more space.

Definitely will want to see that video!

I agree with you on the current setup as being "over-encumbered". I think I'll put the case on the floor, whether between the two racks or into the corner I am not sure yet. The LCD is not mountable and has a big base, so attaching it to the wall is not really an option. Plus, I don't really have any empty wall space that isn't covered by sound proofing panels or curtains!

I spent this morning entering all my laserdiscs into www.lddb.com, it took me almost 2 hours. I couldn't believe I actually have 165 of them! I wish I could get a hold of the Tron laserdisc but they're asking like $80 for it on ebay. Here is a list of my laserdiscs if anybody is interested.
http://www.lddb.com/collection.php?action=list&user=invenio

Here it comes! (Video at the end)


So this is how I started earlier this year, with two bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer from a company called The Loudspeaker Kit. The TV rack is half wedged into a corner, with the fireplace blocking it from sitting flush with the wall. Huge amount of wasted space just to accommodate a TV and a PS3, plus the area below it is too fractioned to use. The AVR sits on top of a cardboard box, wires crisscrossing everywhere and the fireplace boarded up to stop draughts from coming into the house. The tile hearth is a problem - It's bumpy and too narrow to place anything flat on.


This is how it is now, with an upgrade to 5.1, all with speakers from the same company as before. I built a pine plywood stage over the tile hearth that runs the entire length of the wall, with MDF and oak veneer trim. The idea is to blend it into the surrounding materials, but I left the trim unstained due to a request from my mom. The stage sits on top of a foam underlay to prevent rattling and vibrations from travelling to the floor. In the corner is a rockwool broadband absorber to treat some brightness and boominess, as well as cultivate some symmetry as the right side of the room has a big opening to the dining area. The TV sits on a custom rack designed to fit this particular TV and centre speaker...


...with a lower shelf for DVD/BD cases.


An aluminium rail is embedded into the stage to allow the rack to roll left and right on wheels. Why?


To make way for the fireplace!


Since we have a central heating system I decided to convert the fireplace into an AV rack. I cleaned out the ash (which took an entire day, phew!), re-paved the concrete, coated the interior with masonry sealer and dusted it with a chemically treated silica powder to prevent mold and insects living there. Then I boarded up the walls with plywood and constructed the rack itself with solid pine. Since the fireplace was built to imprecise standards, all the dimensions had to be measured at multiple points to ensure a good fit. The bottom panels had to be foam padded and shimmed as well to get it nice and level. A top panel caps the fireplace off and stops cool/warm air from leaking out. If you look closely you'll see I designed a few gaps for cable management. A hidden nook beside the AVR houses the power board, and remote-controlled cold cathode lamps in a recess for light.

All this including the stage and TV rack are finished in a high wear flooring polyurethane.


Because the TV rack now impedes line of sight to the AVR, I installed an IR signal "bender" that takes IR signals and repeats them along a cable lined with IR LED's. This enables the AVR to be controlled when the TV rack is in the centre position. The PS3 using bluetooth technology of course doesn't require this.


The speaker finishes. The 4 speakers on the stage alternate between teak and worn white. Since the kit speakers don't come with any identifying features, I sprayed the logo on them instead. Gold for teak, black for white.


A little cable management, and the remote control wall socket that acts as a master switch for the whole system.


I worked with my mom to produce these wall cushions for the ottomans, as the wall was a little uncomfortable to lean against. These also help reduce the first reflections just a little.


The lampshade from this light was removed when we moved in 3 years ago because, well, it was ugly. Again I custom built a Japanese style lamp with shellacked solid timber and paper-lined perspex. Notice in the background I mounted the acoustic panels on the picture railing with hooks, which makes for a much neater look.


Just a picture of the speakers in progress


In a pinch, the room can be temporarily retrofitted with a projector + screen setup and 7.1 sound. In the future I plan to install a ceiling - mounted dropdown screen so I can switch between the TV and projector.

Equipment:

Panasonic Viera 32" 1080p TV
PS3 Slim
Denon 2807 AVR
LSK TL6 Mains
LSK C6 Centre
LSK S250 Subwoofer
LSK M6 Surrounds
LSK M4 Rear Surrounds

Thanks for reading, and I leave you with the build video for my 5.1 home theatre

(Do me a favor, watch in HD)

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DrP Wrote:It's one thing to go to the store and buy nice things, but when you go through the trouble of designing and building something that is unique and serves your desired functions better than anything store bought,... well that's something else.

I completely agree. The project started because I realized my parents were endlessly butting heads over which direction to take the room in. My dad didn't want the TV rack to be in a permanent central placement in front of the fireplace for symbolic reasons, and my mom wanted above all a neat look and maximum space. I on the other hand was tired of looking at the TV sideways and needed a proper place to set up my AV equipment. We almost ended up buying a cabinet that wouldn't have suited the place in any dimension and a poor compromise at best.

One day I decided to draw up a 3D model of the living room. The design went through a few revisions based on the idea of incorporating the fireplace with a sliding element. That really helped us visualize an end result and agree on a decision. Looking back now, I think our disagreements actually resulted in something that any one of us could imagine.

That corner cabinet pictured there is yet to be built. It's very hard to convince my mom to allow me to use more space, so I built the acoustic panels as a trial for her ears. The idea is to use an acoustic panel as the door of the cabinet, allowing you to use the gap behind the panel as extra storage space. I'm no acoustics expert but I'm told that this would only minimally impact the performance of the absorber.

DrP Wrote:I really like how the room came out overall. The wood motif looks really nice and everything matches. The wooded floor is beautiful and it seems like everything matches this wood motif. Cabinets, fireplace, component rack, furniture, even the light fixture. Very nice.

Oh yeah. This is the third family home we've moved into, and I made sure my parents understood that nothing should be done to the living room before I've had a look at it. Before this the home design method was based on messy compromises and blind, directionless choices. CLU notwithstanding, some dictatorships can work

DrP Wrote:The rail for sliding the TV and cabinet out of the way was shear genius. Also, the custom built fireplace front looks very nice. When you were talking about not staining it, I first thought, why not? But after looking at more carefully, the unstained finish actually matches the speaker cabinets really well.

Yes, looking at it now I'm quite sure staining the trim would have taken the focus off the cabinets. I have to say designing and building the rail was the most fun I had

DrP Wrote:You also did a really nice job with the cable management. Sometimes it can be really difficult to run all those cables, especially in a smaller space and hide them away from site. Clearly this room is not just a home theater, but also a living room area so other aesthetics need to be considered. You don't want anybody tripping over wires! Once again, great job.

It helps that the room naturally hides the majority of the runs. I did research on the wisdom of bunching power cables and speaker wire together, and after some time I got the general message that you would have to make a intentional effort to create the right conditions for artifacts to creep in. You can't see it in the pictures, but my dad's record player sits inside the cabinet at the back. I hooked it up to my system and let him listen to it, and that was all the convincing he needed to let me remove his stock speakers and permanently link the record player to my AVR.

DrP Wrote:It's nice that you have the capability to switch to projector/7.1 setup if needed. This gives you the versatility of going "all out" for special occasions... like a party viewing of Tron: Legacy! Frankly, I think it is a great system even with 5.1 and the smaller screen.

Indeed, and I inaugurated the home theatre by inviting friends over for a 7.1 Tron viewing I got many requests to play another movie, or play it later in the night, but I didn't budge. I wanted to see the Grid again and I wanted it LOUD.

DrP Wrote:And one last word about the youtube video... my god... that is one of the best room built videos I have ever seen. It really does a nice job of showing all the love and care that went into the speaker and the room build. Top marks, all around!

Thanks, that really took the most effort, not because it was that difficult, but the fact that I had to set up the camera before moving on to each new step. The room build part took a camera shooting in timelapse for the better part of 3 months.

My sincere thanks again DrP, you've shown me more appreciation than all my friends and posters from other audio forums have combined!