curt248

I just made my own acoustic fiberglass panels. I put one in (2 feet X 4 feet X 2 inches) at one of the first reflection points and it made a huge difference for the better. It's hard to explain, but the instruments are more detailed. I suppose it's because it is less mudded by sound if it hits your ear at the same time. It cost me around $250 for enough material to make 9 of these panels. They can be made for less easily. I used a more expensive speaker grill cloth material that cost $100 for 10 linear yards that are 63 inches wide. I used lathes from menards which cost $7 for 50. I bought 100 since not all of them are straight or useable etc. I also bought 3 six foot 2X4 pieces of wood at around $1.30 each and cut them to 2 inch sections for and stapled them together to made the corners. I bought polyester batting (material used for making quilts) and put that over the back side to keep the fiberglass particles contained. The batting cost ~$12 for enough for a king size bed. I purchased 2 of those. The fiberglass itself came in a pack of 9 for $80 from a specialty place that sold them in the area. They would sell less but I just went ahead and bought all 9. I added a blackout curtain across the entire back wall to deal with comb filtering. It took 5 sections at around $16 each and a $30 curtain rod setup that could go up to 120 inches wide. I did this about a month ago. If you are near the back wall, (I'm about 2 to 3 feet away when listening) you have major comb filtering problems if the back wall is not treated. This smoothed out the sound quite a bit. Also the reduction of light added a great deal of ambiance to the room. I now added 2 more panels and the bass is better controlled. From what have been reading, 8 panels tend to be the best amount for both small rooms (need more per cubic foot because of increased problems with smaller rooms) and larger rooms. This is enough if you space the panels around 5 inches from the wall. More are needed if you space them less like 2 inches. The great thing is that if you use less space between the panel and the wall that you can just add more panels to get the same effect. This room treatment stuff is unbelievably important. So far every addition I've done has made easily noticeable improvements to my room. These improvements are individually far more substantial than improvements by changing equipment for better stuff. So far the projects have been fun and not too expensive.

I'd like to know more about your experiences with different room treatments. This is my first forey into room treatments. It was perfect for me since it cost almost nothing especially as compared to any audio equipment I've purchased trying to Weeks out a bit more performance. I'm sure there are ways to tweek the performance with different treatment materials and placement. What did you find to be the benefits and detriments to the different materials and brands that you have tried? I still have to treat my first reflection points. Do you think velvet type blackout curtains would work well for the side wall reflection points? Also I was thinking of using the same blackout curtains to treat the back wall to reduce comb filtering. Im not sure what the sound absorbing abilities of blackout curtains are but since that type of material is often seen in movie theaters I'd think it would help.

I just added some corner bass traps from the foam factory. Whoa. If any of you don't have these yet, order them now. They made such a massive difference in sound quality that it isn't even funny. These things make kick drums sound like I'm standing in front of the drummer. The sound is just so planted now. You'd never know what your missing until you put these in your room. Since the bass (and other frequencies) are being held at bay, everything else sounds so much sweeter. When a singer goes throughout thier vocal range its so silky smooth and effortless. My system is on an entirely different level now. These things took 5 minutes to throw up in the corners and made more difference than anything else I've ever done to the system with possibly the exception of going to the la scala speakers over the cerwin vega's I was using previously. This purchase should be a no brainer to everyone interested in making thier system sound better. I got 8 of the foam corner bass traps from the foam factory for $100. http://www.thefoamfactory.com/acousticfoam/bassbroad.html I'd say that 8 is a good place to start. My corners are already filled up almost half way up the wall with speakers so the 8 were perfect to finish off the corners. If you have no speakers in the corners, I'd probably buy 16 and be done with it. It's better to overdo it then take some away if needed (sound is too dead or not lively enough). I don't know anyone at the foam factory or have any incentive to try to sell these things. I'm just blown away by how effective they were. I started looking into something to correct my room after listening to a set of la scalas I sold to someone in the buyers house. They sounded like totally different speakers. I figured that it was probably the tube amp he was using (I'm using solid state). He borrowed me his tube amp (awesome guy) and I tried the tube amp with my la scalas. They sounded horrible and nothing like they sounded at his place. I then tried out some 570 watt monoblocks from the same guy in my setup and they sounded great. When I brought them back to his house, we hooked them up to his la scalas. They sounded aweful. It was like they weren't even the same type of speaker let alone the same speaker that they actuallly were. They only thing different in our setups was the room. This was the only variable as we both were using the same source (squeezebox touch), amp and speakers. Nothing else was different but the room. If I didn't hear it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. This might explain why someone raves about a speaker, amp or whatever and someone else says it's junk and not to bother with it. Its the room! Go to this place to learn more about room treatments. This owner is awesome and really knows his stuff. http://www.realtraps.com/index.htm

Ok I've been listening to the upa7 amp for about a week now. It is fantastic with my La Scalas. It's super quiet. The music just bursts through from a soundless backgroud. I just added some corner bass traps from the foam factory. Whoa. If any of you don't have these yet, order them now. They made such a massive difference in sound quality that it isn't even funny. These things make kick drums sound like I'm standing in front of the drummer. The sound is just so planted now. You'd never know what your missing until you put these in your room. Since the bass (and other frequencies) are being held at bay, everything else sounds so much sweeter. When a singer goes throughout thier vocal range its so silky smooth and effortless. My system is on an entirely different level now. These things took 5 minutes to throw up in the corners and made more difference than anything else I've ever done to the system with possibly the exception of going to the la scala speakers over the cerwin vega's I was using previously. This purchase should be a no brainer to everyone interested in making thier system sound better. I got 8 of the foam corner bass traps from the foam factory for $100. http://www.thefoamfactory.com/acousticfoam/bassbroad.html I'd say that 8 is a good place to start. My corners are already filled up almost half way up the wall with speakers so the 8 were perfect to finish off the corners. If you have no speakers in the corners, I'd probably buy 16 and be done with it. It's better to overdo it then take some away if needed (sound is too dead or not lively enough). I don't know anyone at the foam factory or have any incentive to try to sell these things. I'm just blown away by how effective they were. I started looking into something to correct my room after listening to a set of la scalas I sold to someone in the buyers house. They sounded like totally different speakers. I figured that it was probably the tube amp he was using (I'm using solid state). He borrowed me his tube amp (awesome guy) and I tried the tube amp with my la scalas. They sounded horrible and nothing like they sounded at his place. I then tried out some 570 watt monoblocks from the same guy in my setup and they sounded great. When I brought them back to his house, we hooked them up to his la scalas. They sounded aweful. It was like they weren't even the same type of speaker let alone the same speaker that they actuallly were. They only thing different in our setups was the room. This was the only variable as we both were using the same source (squeezebox touch), amp and speakers. Nothing else was different but the room. If I didn't hear it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. This might explain why someone raves about a speaker, amp or whatever and someone else says it's junk and not to bother with it. Its the room! Go to this place to learn more about room treatments. This owner is awesome and really knows his stuff. http://www.realtraps.com/index.htm

I tryed a pair of wyred 4 sound sx-1000's as well with my la scalas. They sounded a bit better than my onkyo 805 receiver. They sounded considerably better when paired with the wyred 4 sound DAC-2. I think the DAC made more of a difference.

Second the SqueezeBox Touch. It is wireless and can transport 100% information up to 24 bit/ 96 Khz files. It does pandora, slacker etc. and finds internet radio from around the world. You can just pick a country and listen to radio from there. Japanese commercials are strange but cool.

spanish harlem by rebecca pidgeon on SACD Iron man flying seen with fighter jets

I just ordered the upa-7 for my 3 la scala front and 2 heresy rears setup. In talking with the guy at emotiva they suggested the upa-7 for the high sensitivity setup of heratige speakers due to a lower sound floor (not sure if I'm getting the right terminology). He said the upa series is quieter than the xpa and that the extra wattage is not needed for the super high sensitivity speakers. With my 130 watt receiver I can play music so loud that I can't hear my own screaming voice and then still turn it up louder with no disortion or issues. I'm thinking an even better 125 watts from a dedicated amp will be plenty and hopefully quieter at mute.

Ok a friend just borrowed me his wyred4 sound W4S DAC-2 and 2 of these W4S SX-1000 Monoblock These are quite expensive for what I'm used to at about $2400 for the 2 channel preamplifier and $1400 for each of the monoblock amps with 540 watts RMS each and now I'm getting the upgrade bug. I listened to a few songs and level matched them with my current Onkyo 805 reciever for 2 channel music without a sub. The wyred for sound stuff brough out things in the music that is really hard to pick out with the onkyo 805. It really is at least a level above the 805. I'm not sure yet if it's the amps or the preamplifier DAC unit. I'm thinking its more the preamp, but I'll do some testing tomorrow to figure that part out. I'll use the amps with my 805 to see if the songs have that extra detail. I mean it is 530 watt/channel vs the 130 watts per channel of my 805 (may be 140 in pure audio 2 channel). To think I'm missing that much of the music just kind of sucks. I thought my stuff was incredibly detailed. It was, but this is so much better in that respect. Also the bass hits harder with more abrupt start and stop of each bass guitar string or whatever is bassy. The extra seperation that I'm hearing is very much like what I heard going to my la scala speakers from what I had. Although, that difference was more like 7 levels better with the la scalas. I'd say this is at least one or maybe 2 levels better in terms of seperation and detail. After hearing this I now know there is better out there for my main passion of home theater. After reading all of the thread here a second tome, I begining to think the umc-1 or maybe the xmc-1 (when it comes out) would be my answer to sonic nirvana. Oh on another note, when using the rca cables for the borrowed setup, I heard a fairly loud when silent buzz in my speakers when connecting the amp. When I used a XLR cable the buzz went away completely. This was using a 6 foot or less RCA cable and a 15 foot XLR cable. In a review I read on the borrowed system, they mentioned that XLR should give a much better sonic experience. I'm wondering if that would translate to the UMC vs XMC? It is making me think that the XLR is just a better setup idea and going to it may be better in the long run.

using the sound meter to match sound levels the bass is way too strong for music and movies. I'm not sure if that was how it was intended or not. Maybe I like to listen to really high db levels normally and the bass is just too much when doing that. I turned my bass down by 10 db and that is just about right. Strange because I am sort of a bass head.

You could go with an all Heresey setup. They would be perfectly matched and sound really good. With Heresies you would need (want) a sub though for movies and for music too. Used Heresies go from $250 to $500 per set of 2. That setup would blow away everything you have heard for movies in any demo room. You could also try an all forte setup. It would be best to keep all of the speakers the same though whatever you do. For a little more $$ you could mix in 2 la scalas for fronts (for really full 2 channel sound). My buddy did this with 5 heresies for a 7.1 Klipsch Heritage system. The surround effects were beyond good. You could hear every nuance of sound. It really felt like a room of sound walls all around you. When we stopped or paused a movie you could feel the walls of sound drop away. Emotiva has some subs that would probably work really well for not too much $$. I'm thinking around $300. The sub is very important in theater. For the ultimate, I will never need another sub, type of sub you could go with the Epik Empire (my personal sub). He is still selling them for $799 which is just an insanely low price for such a sub. Epik also makes a slightly smaller sub with the same design for $500. You might have to wait a bit to find all of your speakers used on craigslist, but it would definitely be worth waiting. For $900 ($300 per set of heriseies) or more likely ~ $400 per nice set or $500 for perfect ones. You'd even have an extra speaker to sell for $200 to $250 as a center speaker for someone else. $900 plus $300 for an awesome but inexpensive (internet direct) subwoofer (check out avs forum for talk of which sub would be best for your budget) brings the total to as little as $1200 for a system that will blow the doors off more than likely anything you've heard. Now that would be a budget system to be proud of. I compared Hereseies to the top of the line reference series Klipsch speakers (not cheap) at a guys house and the Heresies were more articulate sounded like a better class of speaker with better articulation and presence. The reference series speaker had way more bass, but the quality of the rest of the sound was good but just not as good as the Heresey. The reference series speakers had a sort of reserved quality to the sound that the Heresies didn't have. As long as you buy a sub, you'll have the best of both worlds. The reference series speaker did look more elegant with a piano black finish, but I'd prefer to put my speaker $$ into the best sound possible.

I'm a little closer to getting my first set of 402's with drivers. I just refinished a set of la scalas in black. They turned out really nice. I used 5 coats of oil paint (takes 24 hours/coat to dry) and I think I have about 7 different types of wood filler laying around now. After I sell them, I should have enough extra cash to put in an order.

I was about to go out and buy a sound level meter from radioshack today, but remembered a sound engineer was saying that apps for the iphone and droid were pretty accurate for setting up commercial sound systems. If you have a android phone get the "RTA Analyzer" for it. You can monitor the spl with it. It's a freedownload. I just used it and it worked well. So sweet. You have to love technology. Even if the spl is not perfectly accurate, the relative spl's should be right. You only need to match all of the speakers to the same sound level.

I love it! It looks even better than the Belle. Is that sub new? What happened to the Belle? My buddy may be interested in it if you are thinking of letting it go.

I can't wait to join this exclusive group soon. Anyone else have jub-scalas to post pics of?

With total control of lighting, I'd definitely get the 8350 and pocket the $1000 and put it torwards a killer sub like the Epik Empire I have. You can read abou that on the AVS subwoofer forum. Initially I didn't know how much light was needed and was afraid that my pj would be a bit dim at 120inches. I have way more lumen output than needed. Brightness has not been an issue at all. I even have the pj on economy mode at all times without issue. If I were to start over, I'd do the acoutically transparent screen and go with a screen size of about 150 inches or 160 inches and use the 8350 or the 8700 or if I had lots of extra $$ the JVC for around $4000. If you don't do the acustically transparent screen, get the Da Lite High power 2.8 screen. Read about it on the AVS projector screen forum. It is fantastic. The fall off on the side (when viewing from an angle) is a non issue as it still seems plenty bright even at something riduculous like 20 degrees (like walking into the room near the front of the screen). I wouldn't go with a non da lite high power 2.8 (make sure its the 2.8) screen unless it was acoustically transparent. You have plenty of depth in your room to do acoustically transparent. I wouldn't shy away from it. What speakers and sound set up will you be using? The heritage speakers are unreal for theater applications. They have effortless instant sound when the big scenes happen on screen due to being extremely efficient. At a sensitivity of 104, the La Scalas have tons of headroom with almost any modern receiver. I'd say 90 or 100 watts would be more than enough for those speakers. I'm using a 130 watt per channel receiver and those speakers can play crystal clear at volumes where you can't hear yourself screaming at the top of your lungs and still have more volume when turning up the knob while remaining crystal clear. Really amazing stuff. I've heard the top Reference Series Klipsch speakers and they sound good, but really pale in comparison to the giant la scalas.

ha ha. I said 4 plug ins for subs not 4 subs. If you start looking into subs, you'll find that sub placement is everything. You just want to have a lot of options to place the sub in different places without running cords all over the place. The wall plate is just a bunch of different hook ups that serves as a pass thru from the outside of the wall to the inside of the wall. When you look at monoprice you'll see what I'm talking about. Basically your speaker outputs plug into the wall plate from your receiver and run inside the wall to another wallplate where you'll plug in your speakers. You will be buying all the bananna clips (the plug ins for your speakers to your reciever on one end and to your speakers on the other end) for your speakers at monoprice, they make all of the hooking up super easy. They come in bigger "plate like" structures that have all the hookups that you have on the back of your receiver. Some are enough for 5.1 some enough for 7.1 or 7.2 or even 9.2. I found that for future proofing I'd just buy 2 of the bigger plates and not use everything but have enough so that I'm not missing any of the hookups needed. The aren't expensive and look really professional. They already have 9.2 receivers out now. You should take a look at how they set them up. I think you might even need a couple of plugs for speakers on the right and left top of the main wall too. I didn't realize that they were adding top left and right speakers to setups already when I said to only get 3 biwired plugs for the front. In any case the plugs are really inexpensive and adding enough now will save regrets later. I was saying 3 on each wall for surrounds not anticipating 9 separate surround speakers but only that you want to have as many placement options for speaker as you can (same idea for the subs). I'm not sure how, in the future, they are going to setup home theater surrounds, so it's good to have many plugs so you are not running speaker wire all over the place on the outside of the wall. You may also consider running an ethernet cable in the wall too. You could also check into running some sort of cables for running lighting controls (from your remote control) (I think they may use ethernet cables for that). In any case the cables are not expensive. The stuff adds up a bit but it's like $3 for this and 1.50 for that on the wall plates or $60 for all of the 12 gauge speaker wire with a rating that passes codes for in wall wiring. I'd say it took me about 3 months of planning to be almost there with the setup. Seating arrangement takes a bunch of planning especially if you are going to have 2 rows of seating. If so, you'll need a riser and you'll need to know how big to make it so that you can see over the peoples heads and also still see the bottom of the screen from the back rows. There is a cool calculator online for this. Trust me this is not an easy no thinking process. The rewards will be 10 fold though. Your projector will have distance requirements for each screen size. You can just call them or use one of the online calculators. For my 120inch screen I needed anywhere from 11 to 25 feet if I remember correctly. The closer you are to the screen the brighter the projector is. They say the sweet spot for the lens is somewhere in the middle though (modern lenses have a zoom range like a camera zoom). I went as close as I could with mine to keep the lumens high. If you look at the difference between really expensive ($30K) projectors (pjs) and cheaper ones is the amount of lumens and how black the blacks are. I chose my projector based on getting the most lumens (with best movie settings) and the blackest blacks at my price point. I went with the epson 8500ub. The new model came out recently is the 8700ub which is pretty much the same but comes with an extra ($300) bulb for a lower price of $2200 (I paid $2500 with a $200 rebate and no extra bulb in January). If I were to buy today I'd get the next model down the epson 8350 which performs pretty much as well for picture quality as mine but has a reduced cost this year of $1300. It has about 100 less lumens in the best mode (than the epson 8700) but it actually has about 30 more lumens (in best movie mode) than the panasonic ae4000 which has won many awards at its $2000 price point. I'm not sure on sound absorbtion. I was just going to add insulation to the ceiling and run double drywall where I needed some extra quiet. There are quite a few different ways to do sound insulation online. I'd check it out online. I would highly recommend a bigger screen than 100 inches. Many people go to that size because they think they will get better picture quality and because they are thinking in terms of televisions. At 120 inches the picture quality is absolutely stunning. It's actually better than my 55 inch hdtv. I'm not sure how they do it but the picture looks unbelievably detailed. The great thing about projectors is that there is no limit on how big you can go. I'd say up to 150 inches without a problem at all and others have gone more like 170 inches and been satisfied. I would have no trouble going as big as possible up to 150 inches. Your room wall size and viewing angles will limit how big you can go. 100 inches is really just too small for a really engaging experience. If you are going through all of the trouble of having a projector go big. It takes a lot of work to get everything to go right. If you want to go smaller it would be much easier to just buy a big tv and call it a day. Televisions are much brighter than any projector, can be used in almost direct sunlight (no window treatments necessary) and don't require special mounts or placement of the pj and don't have bulbs that wear out in 3000 hours. I'd even suggest building an acoustically transparent screen and putting the speakers behind the screen so that you can go even bigger. I'd love to go bigger in my current setup but my speakers get in the way. You don't want to invite people over to your dedicated theater to be like wow at this distance from the screen it looks like our 60in tv at home. You want "Wow that was awesome, did you see the size of that screen!"There really isn't much of a price difference between screen sizes either. Especially if you build your own screen. Someone built an accoutically transparent 160 inch screen with nice borders for $400 in a day at home with his wife. I'd also suggest one good sub instead of two (at least in the beginning). You have other things to spend money on. You only get something like 6db increase in volume from adding an extra sub (of course you get more even coverage). I'd still suggest one good sub first. Check out the AVS forum for what people are talking about. Trust me those subs are unreal. Some are as little as $400. I only paid $799 for mine and I can't imagine ever needing better quality or more bass.

I have a few extra la scalas at home (6 extra). I wonder if it would be good to place the la scalas on top of each other in the way you described above for better sound. I have a dx-38 crossover that has 2 inputs and 4 outputs. That would be good for the 2 mains being 4 la scalas (2 for each main). Would this work well?

ok yeah that's what they were saying about having channels for 2subs in stereo. I'll have to check on the price used. New the one with 6 outs 3 point something is only $799 right now.

the Ashley Protea 3.6SP looks good to fit the bill for three 2 way speakers up front in one unit. It has 24bit processing and even a usb and rs232 jacks. Can anyone compare and contrast this to the dx-38 that I have? If there is no major advantage to the dx-38 I may just buy one of these.

My buddy just changed over to a comparable yamaha to an onkyo and is super happy with the change. I'd probably go with an onkyo everything else being equal.

I'd put in lots of hookups in the walls. I'd say 3 sets of double speaker (for possible bi amp) for the front wall, 3 sets of one speaker posts along the other 3 walls for current and future surrounds (9 total), a subwoofer (rca) in each corner of the room, a giant plate or 2 with plug ins for everything that comes out of your reciever including the 4 sub inputs from the corners, 12 gauge in wall rated speaker wire for all speaker hook ups, a tube going from the reciever area to the projector with fish wire for hdmi cables, a power outlet in the ceiling for the projector. I may be missing a few things but this is a good start to think about what you need. I bought all of the above from monoprice (best place by far for price) for around $400. I didn't finish my room yet but the dimensions were 12 X 21 so pretty similar to yours. I would seriously consider getting a acoustically transparent screen and putting your front 3 speakers behind it so you can go bigger with your screen size. Make sure you can block out all light for movies. People have made nice acoustically transparent screens in the 150 inch (diagonal 16:9) size for around $400.

Ok I just read this entire post. Phew. I am a total newbie when it comes to this idea of using a separate processor. What are the advantages? Apparently sound quality goes up somehow? I'm currently using the Onkyo sr805 that others here have been using. What would I gain by switching over to the umc-1? Are there other higher end processors that could be had on the used market that would surpass the umc-1? My main use is for home theater but since I started getting klipsch heritage speakers have been listening to more music than ever. I am also in the process of upgrading my la scalas to jub-scalas. This requires the use of a separate crossover (using dx-38) that uses xlr inputs and outputs so it would be nice (not essential) to have something that would also have those. Is everyone using separate power amps for the umc-1? Would it make any sense to use the amplifier section in my onkyo sr805? Maybe someone could direct me to a place where I could learn more about the advantages of using a separate processor. Also if someone has had the same receiver (805) and made the upgrade, what type of jump in sound quality would I be in for? Would it be like going from heresies to la scalas or is the jump more minute?

A good sub will make a world of difference. The Epik Empire is outstanding (my personal sub) and sells for $799 (retail ~$1500). They also just came out with a smaller version for $499. Go to the AVS forum for subwoofers and read up a bit. Any of the subs that the people there regularly recommend will be outstanding. I'd say that any of those will be better than anything you have heard in a home theater setup demo in stores.

Has anyone here heard or transformed thier la scalas by reinforcing the bass bin and/or turning it around in a corner? When making a jub-scala it would be easy to just turn around the bass bin and still have the 402 horn facing forward. I'd be interested in seeing how one would stiffin up the bass bin. Does anyone remember a step by step intruction post to do this?