Paducah Home Theater

It was a question to figure out if you want a tight punch or if a sloppy boom would suffice. But, now that you mention it, most people who are looking for subwoofers largely only for music and "really want it to shake" are in fact heavily invested into rap music.

I'm sure. It only costs over 4 times as much too.

As for music, like I said earlier, rap is easy, it just friggin goes boom. I want more out of a musical sub though. Personally, I want to make a DIY pro audio subwoofer. Dying to build something with this: http://www.parts-express.com/eminence-definimax-4018lf-18-speaker-driver--290-579 Kick drums and bass guitars ought to come alive with such a thing. I'd love to take my Ultimax's out and put these guys in, then build new ported cabs for my Ultimax's. At that point I'd have two Klipsch 15's, two Ultimax's in a massive ported box, and two of these guys if I wanted to throw some devil horns up and bang my head.

I have two of the new Klipsch R-sw115's, and while there is admittedly better stuff to be had, which is also true on any other brand's offerings as far as that goes, I can't imagine that the average consumer would actually want a whole hell of a lot more. I had the gain way up and had Metallica going so hard that our seats were shaking HARD on the bass guitar, it was totally encapsulating, so much that you get that weird tingly feeling once the music stops. Once calibrated properly, I am much more limited by what our ears can handle on the mids and highs, and never due to the subs. Yet, that's not enough? Really? Sometimes I think dudes wayyyyyyyy overthink stuff and/or just don't have things set up right in terms of optimal placement in their room. As for neighbors, is this an apartment or a separate house? Last night the kids were watching the animated DreamWorks "spooky stories", on NetFlix, which kind of sucks for bass response, yet my kitchen dishes were rattling even at -25 db on a weak mix. The sound has to exit the theater room, go through a mud/utility room, through the dining/living area and to the other side of the kitchen, and I still had dishes rattling, on a friggin netflix cartoon, through multiple rooms and on the other side of a 9,000 cubic foot great room, and the subs were barely being tickled. If I had close neighbors, especially in an apartment, being pissed off just doesn't describe it, they would kill me.

I have two of the new Klipsch 15's What kind of music? Rap is easy.

My dad made adirondack chairs out of pine, painted them with rustoleum, and they lasted out in the direct sunlight and rain for years while still looking new. Otherwise I dunno but yeah marine plywood seems optimal. Only problem is that you may need to prime and sand the edges real well or else the layers of wood will show, which may not look all that great.

I'm saying life is full of interesting compromises. Yes that is probably within your budget or at least close and would absolutely kill anything else we have been talking about here. It also has a very large footprint, you literally need nearly 60 cubic feet internal dimensions, then running multiple iNukes may strain your electrical unless you have multiple circuits. But, you wanted the best most badass and lowest setup for 2 grand... so yeah, four 18's in a ported box tuned to 15 hz. If that's not doable for whatever reason then its time to compromise.

Exactly, I can't make a determination on what little is out there. I was afraid of this. It sounded cool but I am afraid it is halfway designed for getting an 18 year old installer who has never seen this stuff before ready to go work for somebody else. I'm not interested in that. I've seen hardcore boot camps that guarantees passing a particular certification at the end, PMP project management certification or MCSE stuff for example, but this does not seem to be like that. Very interested in this, I need to research the certification paths further. Electrical, software, telecommunications, sometimes all three at the same time. Exactly. Completely agree.

I've about decided to skip it, I'd be out a minimum of $1,500 and that would go a long way towards other stuff that I need much worse. I'll reevaluate next year.

Absolute best for a large room for about 2 grand with super low movie effects in mind... build four huge ported UltiMax 18's tuned to like 15 hz powered by two iNuke 6000 DSP's. Drivers and amps would be $1,800 worst case, possibly less if you can haggle. The other $200 will get you about six sheets of MDF. You probably need more wood than that though.

The infamous sub damaging material is just on the opening credits, it's this continuous obnoxious sine wave that steps down like 4 times for no apparent reason. Otherwise it's pretty on-par with most good action movies, I think there's just as much or more LFE's in Transformers. I was much more impressed with the 7.1 rear surround content on "edge of tomorrow", I haven't heard any movie that sounds as nice on rear surround material. Also the fullness of the gatlin guns sounded totally badass on my RF-7ii's that I'm running full range. The sound effects from the gatlin guns that were mounted on the suits was my favorite part by far. What makes me grin is movies where you're NOT expecting bass. For example, the Toy Story Halloween special. There is LFE that runs all over several big name action movies.

I've been thinking that second recommendation is for music for some reason, but apparently a ton of good movies use DTS-HD Master Audio. So why is their primary recommendation to put them close together but if using DTS-HD MA, spread 'em out? Makes no sense.

you talking about a music disc? Hell if I know. I thought music discs were only 5 channel. I've never heard of a 7 channel audio-only music disc.

SVS apparently disagrees, they are known to strongly recommend two PB-2000's over one SB13-Ultra. But hey, what do they know. funny when i bought from them they recommended one pb-13 ultra over two of their lesser subs. so id say they are all typical salesman, and they have their own opinion. and id also take two PORTED 2000's over the SEALED 13 ultra. sure thats a no brainer. I accidentally typed SB last night. I meant the PB13-Ultra. I don't think SVS is like Crutchfield where you get multiple sales people. I'm pretty sure it's usually Ed. The end recommendation that he gave me via email was in fact one PB-13. However, when we started out I had just called in, I'm assuming it was still him but can't remember, it was a soft spoken guy that sounded older and didn't talk very fast. I was asking about two PB13-Ultra's but then balked at the price. 4 grand or so for two 13's seemed a bit silly. He thought that was overkill for my room anyway regardless of the price. I was going to drop one sub. At that point the dual PB -2000's was highly recommended instead, mentioning several reasons, but I wanted a nicer/bigger sub that I could expand on later so it was switched. Maybe we totally misunderstood each other but the impression I got was that they always recommend two subs over one, even if you have to drop down to the PB-2000's for budget reasons, unless you have a receiver that does not have Audessey XT32 with SubEQ, and if that's the case then go with one nicer one. I've seen other guys on forums get this same impression as well.

Yeah the whole ROI thing is whats on my mind. I don't want to shell that out if there's a book or DVD that can teach me the same thing. I've been to plenty of conferences before but I wasn't the one writing the check. Kinda makes you wonder if its worth it more in that situation.

Yeah I was about to post this, that's today's standard as far as I am aware. Here's what I don't get though... if you use Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio, your 7.1/rears are supposed to be spread out. Of course, when exactly was the last time that you popped in a 7.1 channel lossless audio disc? I don't even know where to get one and if you go with a Marantz setup I think you have to get their $1,200 disc player to even play it.

The best large'ish venue bass guitar I've ever heard in terms of accurate tone was the Stone Temple Pilots concert blu-ray, especially "Creep". It truly did have that actual Ampeg growl that you hear when sitting right in front of the bass cabinets. I am listening to the studio version right this second and I honestly believe the concert version is better. That's not particularly the best performance especially in terms of the fun factor but the tone for the bass guitar is spot on. Most bass guitar recordings nowadays mostly sound like the bass root note and not much else so I really like it when you can hear the extra magic going on inside the amp.

As already mentioned, direct firing is the official recommendation, and they're supposed to be pretty close together, not at least 4' apart as mentioned in a different thread. However... I'm just not convinced that it matters a whole hell of a lot. I can only name two movies I've seen that have any sort of noticeable 7.1 / rear surround material, and only one that was very strong where I knew that's exactly where it was coming from. That was Edge of Tomorrow. Most other movies are either only mixed for 5.1 or only has very weak 7.1 rear material for ambience. I'm running RS-62ii's for my rears and I just can't believe that direct firing speakers closer together in this position would really gain me a whole hell of a lot. But, yeah, that's the official recommendation. Personally I just like the look of the RS series, I think the RB's just bolted onto a wall look pretty funny. If you could run them on a stand or actually on a shelf then yeah but bolted onto a wall just doesn't do it for me. Due to a curved seating arrangement I wanted mine elevated, which meant bolted onto a wall, and wanted the rears to match, so I chose the RS. YMMV.

SVS apparently disagrees, they are known to strongly recommend two PB-2000's over one SB13-Ultra. But hey, what do they know.

Get you one of those Digital Drive 18's that Velodyne makes.

There is a sane person amongst us.

So, little known fact about me, I'm in the process of starting up a local custom installation business. I know other local professional installers and I think I can do better. I even directly hired one a couple years ago for design help and it was quite the joke, better recommendations could have come out of a forum even from non-professionals. So, with my engineering background I hope to do things a bit different. So, with that in mind, here's the deal... this week is CEDIA boot camp week. 6 days in Indy. The last 3 days is home theater, Thursday through Saturday I believe. Think it's worth $1,100 plus three $90 a night hotel rooms and 10 hours of driving? I've been watching videos and I keep saying I've done that, I've done that, I've done that... what I haven't done is high end projector calibration and design. Best I can tell, this aspect is the best I could hope to get out of it, apparently there's not so well known standards regarding most everything in the projector world plus I just don't really know how to calibrate them properly. Can't decide if I should go for that alone or not. Thoughts?

I was friends with a recording studio owner and got to hang out there a lot. There's quite a bit of magic they do to say the least. About the best you can hope for is mimicking a good band in a small venue. I say that because in a small venue they don't "really" have to go through a PA system on anything except vocals, all the guitars and bass and drums are as natural as possible, plus you don't have all the echos and whatnot of a large venue. Drums are rarely amplified and the guitar and bass is typically just straight out of their own amps. Unless you know what a raw Ampeg bass setup sounds like unamplified through a PA up close as played by a hardcore bass player, you don't really know what a bass guitar is supposed to sound like.

Notice that you won't find any "power" lineage stuff at BestBuy though, just like you won't find RF-7ii's, or $8,000 projectors. I have no doubt that their higher end stuff is still badass. But, just like back 20 years ago, if you buy the equivalent of "series 1", I wouldn't expect a whole hell of a lot. Everything seems cheaper nowadays and unless you go with the flagship models on most any brand, somebody is going to call it "cheap".

A big part of the allure of the old ones was that they were underrated. Like I said before, my friend was using a punch 40 to power the hell out of two 18's. You could get a punch 40 and a punch 60 and be in the lowest power class, 0-100. You couldn't get away with that with any other brand. The closest comparison they could come up with was comparing that 30Wx2 Punch 60 to an amp rated at 125Wx2 which is defeating the purpose. That would have bumped you up into a much higher power class. I don't see the point in this comparison other than to say your money goes further with Chinese stuff. http://rftech.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/1564/0/filename/RF_P60DSM-vs-P5002.pdf