I figured instead of cluttering up the CDApS thread, I'll start my own. I'm putting it here in General because (as we all know) this is the most viewed section. Plus, this is part DIY, part Home Theater, part Members System, and of course with me it's lots of Sound Treatment. LOL  So General it is. I may go do specific things in other areas, but for now I'm going to post pictures and think out loud in this thread.

So to gather and rehash - my room is kind of a cluster. It's not quite a dedicated listening room, as it's my only decently large room in the house which is my living room - which is L-shaped. The main part (if I remember correctly is 25' long, and 15' wide, with only 8 foot ceilings. The front right opens into a small dining room area, and I have a large cutout in the right wall that opens into the kitchen. Behind the couch are stairs to the front door and long hall to the three bedrooms. So very less than ideal - and when I bought this house and setup this room, I was engaged and taking a break from two channel audio.  Now I'm single, and audio is as much a part of my life as anything else, this room needs a bit of a revamp.

What prompted this update was my trusty 8 year old Mitsubishi HC5500 projector  died after many thousands of hours of binge watching TV shows, movies, and Movie Nights with friends. I really don't have a "TV", so it's projector or nothing (or small computer screens I guess).  So with a new, 2017 model projector on order, I realized it's probably time to update to an "acoustically transparent" screen, and getting my home theater speakers up and off the floor giving my reference speakers (the very last Decware MG-944) room to breath.

This is kind of an extreme example as I was "testing" lots of different equipment, building speakers, subs, and testing some vintage speakers, plus (again, single living LOL) putting diffusers all over since I'm building and testing those as well.




Lots going on here - RPG diffusers and absorbers on the ceiling with the old projector nestled in. EPS foam and custom DIY diffusers and various absorbers and corner trap around the room, Five(!) pairs of speakers all fighting for space up front. Two(!) glass and aluminum low slung gear shelves side-by-side between and behind the speakers...what a complete cluster! But, I still manage to get some great sound out of this...even Palomino was surprised as how good it sounded with this hodge-podge going on.




Overall goals:

New Projector with BIGGGGGER "acoustically transparent" screen.

Move HT L-C-R speakers behind the screen freeing up some space.

Sell off, store, or repurpose unused gear, freeing up more space.

Figure out something to do with the glass and aluminum audio racks and gear (vertical rack off to the side? Blacked out panel under screen? different room and long cables??) Also freeing up space.

Finish building 2nd 18" sub - figure out issue with 21" sub, and work on better placement of all three.

Front of room should be nothing but speakers in use and sound treatment.

Sort through and sell off or repurpose sound treatment not in use. Of the sound treatment I'm keeping, repaint, frame, and/or mount to walls. Also come up with a quick diffuser deployment scheme for critical listening (AKA CDApS meets) for in front of screen, or possibly behind screen.

Get REW and measurement microphone working, relearn the software and take measurements to properly tune the room as best as is possible with a non dedicated room.

Phew, that's a lot...I'm a bit overwhelmed and I'm the damned fool who put the list together!  I might add/remove/adjust things as I make progress on this list.  Speaking of...

Adding: figure out better lighting and lighting controls for room.  

Crazy panoramic photo of the room - you can see diffusers scattered all over, a couple bass traps in corners, my big cherry stained oak "space invader" looking diffuser diffuser on the back wall (middle of image). Stairs and hallway behind couch. Hard to wrap your head around if you've not seen the room before, but it's all there.  :)

Diffusers and absorbers on the ceiling. Diffusers have been sold and are coming down tonight to ship. New projector will have to be moved back about 2.4' to accommodate future 2.40:1 screen




Current Speaker Lineup - The Klipsch will go up and behind the screen (unless I can finder something better/smaller and swap them out). Blue Zu speakers are up for sale, and the venerable MG-944 speakers are staying. El Camino speakers are still occasionally put into rotation and will be put off to the side.




Current screen setup - I built this 120" diagonal screen 8+ years ago. It's literally a lightly textured white melamine counter top material I bought in a roll from Menards, that's stapled to a 2x4 frame, edged by window casing (trim) covered in Joanne fabrics black velvet. Comparable to a $1200 screen, for under $200!  Note: the vertical blue tape on the wall is the size of the future screen(!).  To get the Klipsch speakers behind the future screen, I'll have to float it 12"+ off the wall. I'd much rather find some smaller, but equally dynamic HT speakers than have the screen protruding into the room that much...I need to find something or deal with what I have - but budget is kinda non-existent.





New projector came in a day early - spent a few minutes last night (2-1-17) getting it setup in the old projector's mount/location. The new one is clunky with manual (twisty knobs) lens adjustments, zoom, and focus and all that...I didn't realize how high end my old projector was with everything being done via remote and little motors...8 years ago!  I wasn't too impressed with the projector at first, but then two things struck me #1, I realized I was watching with most of the lights on! Something I couldn't do without washing out the image before. And #2 as the bulb started to break in, the blacks got blacker and the image settled down and just looked so much nicer. Supposedly a projector lamp loses 25% of its output in the first 500 hours, then tapers down slowly after that.





Tonight I take down diffusers sold (box them up and ship), and move my fleet of diffusers to another room to give me space to work.

A phrase I never thought I'd ever say, but....I have $90 of spandex on the way!  (for my future screen)

More Later - I have to do this work thing now.

I'm thinking you already did make an art project, that's a nice pic of the broken tube. Could be a motivational poster or a perfect sadness emoticon for a tubehead.

JD

Quote:


(looking back at image) damn, that's a great idea!!  Anyone have any caption ideas??

Quote:


I went with the Epson Home Cinema 3100. I probably should have gotten the 3700 considering how WIDE I'm going (more lumens on the 3700, otherwise pretty equal projectors), but my goal was to try and stay around $1000 and just have *something* to hold me over till 4K projectors come down to a price us mere mortals can afford.  

Looks like the price went up on both of these! I paid $1179

https://www.adorama.com/iespl3100.html

https://www.adorama.com/iespl3700.html


If you can swing it, and want something more serious, I'd be looking at a projector in the $3000-$7000 range that has motorized lens adjustments, and lens memory, and maybe even laser instead of a traditional lamp.  

I did a lot of research and got what I think is the *best* projector in the just over $1000 range - it's powerful (bright), and has (manual) lens adjustments, and decent contrast. It's good all around. And the 3D really surprised me with how good it is, and I don't even care much for 3D.

LR take a look at 2020 Series Aluminum Extrusion. Its not as long as you need but they sell all kinds of adapters/corners to put them together and make frames out of them. These are used for CNC tables and enclosures.

You mean 80/20?

I've been using that for projects for years, and was my first choice...but the cost would ruin this project.

I am however working on an 80/20 extrusion gear rack experiment that I'm building - but that's put on pause to build diffusers for Axpona.

Yes the 80/20 stuff. I think the 80/20 is the company but 2020 is the size. I know there is also a metric and standard version under different numbers. I think the 2020 is the metric version. The stuff is expensive but would be perfect for what you need it for.

Finally got time to make some progress. I had a friend over who was tall enough (and agile enough) to help me take down the old screen and hang the new screen. So I spent some time putting the new "acoustically transparent" screen together, and we watched a few movies this weekend!

It's hard to tell from this photo, but the screen is HUGE. 150" across, 63" tall, which gives it a Cinemascope diagonal of about 163", or a 16:9 (HD) screen size of 129".  Basically I'll be using the zoom feature on the projector to fill the screen when I have a Cinemascope movie, and everything else standard HD I'll just fill the screen height, and maybe make black borders to block the extra width.  (this will make more sense once I get it fully setup and show the photos)

Yeah, doesn't look that big. I used Poplar 1x4 for the outer frame, and oak 1x2 for the vertical braces  



Did some Flat Black paint - used some good quality spray, and had two coats knocked out in less than an hour. Don't want anything to reflect back through the screen.







I got the tall girl to help carry the frame out of the garage into the driveway, then up the front steps, into the kitchen, then swing back into the living room. The Kreg pocket hole jig is pretty amazing, just some glue and screws and I had this giant, but lightweight frame strong enough to easily carry around the house. Laid it on some black Spandex, and started stretching and stapling in place. The material was 60" x 4 yards long. I realized after stapling it up, I could easily have made this screen another few inches in each direction(!) but seriously, it's big!



After getting the black spandex on, I put the white spandex over it. The theory being that the black spandex helps contrast at the cost of a few lumens, and also blocks any stray light from reflecting off the frame or speakers to be hidden behind the screen. While it was upright, I leaned it in front of speakers while music was playing, and the high frequency attenuation was very slight - probably a good thing considering I'm planning on putting some Klipsch L-C-R behind it.



Whipped up some french cleats from some 4 x 4 cedar I had left over from another project.

Oh yeah, added project/bonus points - I'm seriously thinking about putting some RGB LED strip lights behind the screen to accentuate how it's floating  off the wall. They would be WiFi enabled and controlled by my phone of course.  ;)

Looking good LR.  Time to spin some good concert footage with an awesome sound stage that I am sure you will achieve.

Wow, very nice/impressive. I, Robot with Will Smith never looked better!

YeeHa! Party at The Raven's!

I like it! You should change your handle to "Grandmaster Chill". (Or if you don't, somebody else should)!