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PeriSoft's HT thread, or: Damn, This Was Totally Worth It

 
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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 2:50 am    Post subject: PeriSoft's HT thread, or: Damn, This Was Totally Worth It Reply with quote


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It's time! So, here's some background. I might start posting some renders later if I don't conk out.

I live in a 'compound' (really an ex-farm with a farmhouse, barn, and new steel machine shop) where my business (motion platforms) is located. My father, uncle, and aunt are principles in the biz with me, and my uncle and parents have houses on the general property (it's big, about 250 acres or something stupid like that all in all). Here's the business' building - my uncle's place is to the left of the pic, the farm house and the barn (my grandmother's place, before she had to move out) behind, and my parents' down the lane that goes away from the camera:



I lived in an apartment in the building (second floor, on the left) until last spring, when my parents inexplicably decided to give me and my wife their awesome house and swap into our apartment. Shorter commute, I guess. Razz

Anyway, we have this awesome house now. Two floors, with guest room / bathroom / great room upstairs and laundry+room+room+bedroom downstairs. The room next to the laundry will be my office; the room next to the bedroom will be the HT. It's about 12'x14'. I have an 808s with some newer tubes for it (yay!) that'll be going in. Planning on a 96" 16:9 screen - and the renders of the room will come soon.

I'm sure this is extremely exciting to you all, so stay tuned. Mr. Green


Last edited by perisoft on Tue Jul 22, 2008 1:21 pm; edited 2 times in total
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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OK, here's some pics of the room and what I have in mind at a basic level. Comments/suggestions welcome, particularly regarding seating, projector mounting (hang lower or tilt?) and speaker placement (one shot has the two VS-120s I use as fronts, but no center/rears in yet).

The room is semi-dedicated, so the screen/backing will tilt up and hook to the ceiling (eventually via servo control) to allow access via the outside door; obviously I'll light seal it around the edges.

I'm planning on putting in a riser and doing two rows of DIY seating, but we'll see how my ambition fares as I get more into it. Again, suggestions welcome. The room will be painted, too - flat dark brown, probably, the same as the doors are in these pics, but I left it beige-ish because it might be a bit before I get the painting done.

As luck would have it, there's a nearly perfect equipment room built right in - the plan's to put the HTPC / amps in there, have cool air vented in at the floor toward the back wall and up out at the ceiling over the gear toward the front wall (with the screen). We've got pieces of lexan around, so I figure I'll seal up the room but good so the pressure's really low in there and do a sealed 1/2" lexan door - snazzy, and if I play it right it'll make that awesome "ssshewp!" sound when it closes. Thumbs Up



room-screen.jpg
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Room with screen and Vegas. This bit is fairly solid - the rest... who knows. Carpeting would be nice but is out of the budget for now.
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room-screen.jpg



room-equipment.jpg
 Description:
The equipment closet. Observe the uncanny luck which provided this space - rack sized with just enough room so I can put the lot on sliders, zing it into the nook to the left, and work on the back side!
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room-equipment.jpg



room-empty.jpg
 Description:
The room as it is now. Except for the rug (which I have elsewhere) and the tons of my parents' stuff that needs to get moved.
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room-empty.jpg


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derfla




Joined: 11 Mar 2006
Posts: 547
Location: eastern ohio


PostLink    Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

looks like a nice space. I am just starting my theater also. I look forward to watching your thread. my space looks allot different though. The main difference is a three foot wide trench thats 2.5 ft deep on the outside basement walls (drains). lol..
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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's hung! It's well-hung! My dad helped me get the monster on the ceiling tonight, and it's lookin' good. Man... I did not know until this evening that I could hold 90 pounds over my head for a minute.

I built a mount and hooked it to the ceiling with the venerable lag bolts and unistrut, and made wide bars to run through the 'L' brackets on the Barco, and we used mechanics wire to 'walk' it up a foot at a time front to back.

The back was pretty easy to lift. The front wasn't. Razz

Still don't have the 'official' screen to hang, and there's a piano in the way so probably i'll be running a smaller screen until I can find somebody to take the piano (Anybody in the upstate area want a free upright piano?) but I can do some real setup now and see how the audio/etc will shake out.

Cool cool cool!

Will post some pics when I get a chance. Oddly I'm pretty tired at the moment...

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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In case it's not fairly obvious, I also got the room cleared of stuff a while ago. Smile
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AnalogRocks
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Joined: 08 Mar 2006
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PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Excellent! I love it when a plan comes together.

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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm pretty psyched. I've decided to do fabric on the walls and ceiling, both for sound and light control, and we picked some stuff out at wally world (Fake suede at JoAnne - $20/yard. Fake suede at wally world - $2.70/yard). The plan is to put up furring strips and stretch the fabric over in panel kinda things, but I'm not quite sure how to do that; must do some tests. Not sure it's stretchy enough to make it look good over a wide horizontal panel.

I snagged a couch at the salivation army for $69 - ugly by itself but oddly the thing had this really nice un-worn un-stained brown suede slipcover. Score! So, that's in there now. The PJ is a bit lower than I thought, despite its matching the renderings, so i've got to experiment with the angles and such to see, because a riser plus the low PJ will mean a lot of bonked heads, and that will mean recalibration... The way the mount is set up, though, I can raise/lower the PJ about eight inches (well, raise it from where it is now) and angle it within reason.

Anyway... cool stuff. Next step is to put up a temporary screen, do a quick setup, and start doing some rough tests with audio to figure out speaker layouts. I've got three 12" subs, they're big, and I'm not sure where the best place is yet. Advice appreciated, too, of course! The vegas up front will be running the LFE channel too, since they're basically just subwoofers with a mid and a tweeter attached; they go down to 17hz (!!) and rumble like a rumbly thing in rumbleville.

For reference, the regular subs are each a little smaller than the cerwin vega speakers in the picture up there, so pretty hefty. Conventional wisdom says put 'em in a corner. Rear corner has equipment room; putting three subs next to equipment probably not good. My best bet is to put them in the front somehow and try to keep them kinda unobtrusive. But I'm not sure I'll get the best quality just stacking up three of 'em front-right, or front-left.

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AnalogRocks
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PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 5:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You'll need fabric stretching pliers. JustGreg talking about them. Indispensable apparently.
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3573

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drice1234




Joined: 07 Oct 2006
Posts: 1309
Location: Allen, Texas


PostLink    Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The plan is to put up furring strips and stretch the fabric over in panel kinda things, but I'm not quite sure how to do that; must do some tests. Not sure it's stretchy enough to make it look good over a wide horizontal panel.


You might want to consider putting some of that cotton(y) type material behind the fabric like they use when hanging cloth wall paper. It will add some pressure behind the fabric to help keep the tension.
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Zebu Fellenz




Joined: 21 Dec 2006
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PostLink    Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Perisoft,

Can you post some pictures of that "fake suade" from wally world.

For light control I've been using tar-paper stapled to wooden frames, same idea but the materials were free.

And whats up with spending almost $70 on a couch, my couch was free and I've had offers for three more from family and friends.

Pictures of the room would also be nice if you get a chance, sounds like it is coming together nicely.

Erik
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JustGreg




Joined: 07 Mar 2006
Posts: 3098
Location: Kenosha, WI


PostLink    Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

AnalogRocks wrote:
You'll need fabric stretching pliers. JustGreg talking about them. Indispensable apparently.
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3573


Yeah the fabric stretchers rocked. They're actually for stretching canvas on art frames. You could build inexpensive fur or pine frame panels to mount to your wall framing. Then stretch and staple the material to the frames.

You have alot of sub action going on there...perhaps mount the panels to the 2x4 studs with velcro? You'll be able to get behind them if needed and you won't be locked into the color of the fabric. Buy two colors of fabric and make every other one the opposite color. Or peel them (the panels) off and move them how you want...say solid colored walls of different colors. Or get fancy and cover them with inexpensive foam and then add pleats and buttons (like buttoned pillows).
If I hadn't gone all Tim Allen in my HT and jumped into drywall blindly I would have gone this route. Still doable...but I need a Fury more. Wink

In my defense, when I built out the tomb, I mean room, I didn't know enough to formulate my requests for help.

Greg

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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 1:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I'm finally getting to do some more stuff on the HT. As it happens, we had to fill the room BACK up with stuff in order to clear out other rooms (!@$@@!) but it's finally emptying out again. In the meantime, I got the fabric pretty much up (not really a good time to take pics) and we've picked paint and decided more on the layout. I also snagged a $69 couch which, remarkably, has fake suede exactly the same color as the walls! So, it's getting down to the brass tacks of the layout - material requirements, actual carpentry templates and design...

As I've mentioned elsewhere, one of my wife's objections was the big-ass row of subwoofers behind the couch. So, she suggested putting in a riser and putting the subs UNDER the couch, rather than suggesting that I eliminate some of the (four) subs! Woohoo... I knew there's a reason I married her.

Any suggestions or comments ("You fool! You can't {whatever}!") appreciated!

I also need to find a way to shoehorn in the 42" plasma that will be the 'normal' TV, which is tricky due to the door/window behind the screen (hence the fabric, in addition to aesthetics). But that's for the future.

So, here are some (fairly final?) design pics:



room-proposed-full.jpg
 Description:
The room, as it's planned to look. Ceiling will be dark gray. Carpet will actually be black; it's shown light so you can see stuff.
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room-proposed-full.jpg



room-proposed-outline.gif
 Description:
null) You can't see the rear speakers from this angle; they'll be in the upper back corners
1) Rear curtains; entry is at the far left
2) Couch. Real couch is rounder
3) Do I need to tell you what this is?
4-14) Got deleted AFTER the preview. Screw it
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room-proposed-outline.gif



riser-overall1.jpg
 Description:
The riser, in more detail and with a curve to avoid splatting into the shelves. I'm a bit worried about handling the transition and curve toward the shelves...
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riser-overall1.jpg



riser-overall2.jpg
 Description:
...but I hope can riser to the occasion. The curve looks vastly nicer, anyway. Again, carpet super light to show what's going on.
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riser-overall2.jpg



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papalek




Joined: 08 Mar 2006
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PostLink    Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 11:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Subs under couch Thumbs Up Thumbs Up Mr. Green No need for BASS shakers. Very Happy
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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 2:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

papalek wrote:
Subs under couch Thumbs Up Thumbs Up Mr. Green No need for BASS shakers. Very Happy


Yeah, the idea is to have the couch actually resting on the subs rather than on the riser. Even with the subs pushed up against the back of the couch, the effect is pretty awesome, so I'm really looking forward to see what it's like with them UNDER the couch!

I'm also feeding the sub signal to the two front speakers, since they go down to about 18hz or something stupid; they have better bass response than most subs I've seen... Razz

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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 1:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So, I'm finally putting stuff together today. I scaled back my original plan (no full carpeting, no riser; time/money constraints). But it's coming together now.

I still have to do:

- Mini-riser to cover the wiring coming out of the equipment room
- Panels to cover the Barco's ugly-ass mount (not a hush box)
- Mount surround speakers and run wiring
- Run wiring for screen (power and trigger)
- Hook up audio & test
- Put color filters in PT65 lenses
- Finish fabric trim on top of walls
- Redo astig to fully resolve 1080p

OK, maybe not the last one quite yet. But the rest isn't too much.

This morning between 6am and 9am, I:

-Cleared crap out of the room
-Cleaned floor
-Ran speaker wiring (this is taped to the floor, runs under the rugs)
-Rolled out rugs (more in pics later)
-Angled projector down to match lower screen
-Learned how to use ratchet straps to ratchet a distance from 7 to 5 inches

So, I've got to say... it looks f*cking AWESOME. I mean... it's daylight, and it's not done completely, but it looks f*cking AWESOME. 15 months of planning and acquisitions and messing around, and a few hours left to opening night... I'm jazzed! Very Happy

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Nashou66




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PostLink    Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When you showing your first movie? I'm only 3 hours away, maybe I can help you kick off opening night !

Athanasios

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perisoft




Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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PostLink    Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 4:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Athanasios - who knows when! My wife is due with our first baby in six days, so I have a feeling it'll be a while before we have guests. Plus, no way in hell I'm going to let a CRTer see my 808s until I get it set up a LOT better than it is now... Wink

I'd love to have you sometime, though. I think there's a fellow CRT guy near by in Ithaca, too. I'll have to see how things work out with the baby... some people tell me he'll sleep all the time and I'll have plenty of time for movies, and some people tell me to kiss everything but diaper changing goodbye! Smile

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Nashou66




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PostLink    Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

perisoft wrote:
Athanasios - who knows when! My wife is due with our first baby in six days, so I have a feeling it'll be a while before we have guests. Plus, no way in hell I'm going to let a CRTer see my 808s until I get it set up a LOT better than it is now... Wink

I'd love to have you sometime, though. I think there's a fellow CRT guy near by in Ithaca, too. I'll have to see how things work out with the baby... some people tell me he'll sleep all the time and I'll have plenty of time for movies, and some people tell me to kiss everything but diaper changing goodbye! Smile


Congrats!!! I hope is healthy and happy !! Anytime you have a chance come on up to buffalo too, my blend plans will soon coem to friutation, I jusy need to decide spend more money on a 2.35 scope screen or just go with the 16x9 i now have and then have to do it all over again when i want to go CIH instead of CIW.

Athanasios

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