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The Home Theater is in operation...Finaly!


cornfedksboy

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Well, I finally have all the pieces in place and I am now enjoying some great movies! I've got pieces from about every generation of reference series, but in the end it's really 5.2 RF-82 set-up. The center is an RC-3, the mains are RF-82s, the subs are RW-12ds, and the surrounds are RS-52 IIs. The cherry towers in the back are RF-25s, and as of now they aren't hooked up. I'll probably wait until I get the second row in and the seperate amp before I fool with those. Anyways, here's some pice:

post-48136-13819657722408_thumb.jpg

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The room looks fantastic! One suggestion is to angle your center channel upward towards your ears instead of at your knees. I was never satisfied with an RC-7 until someone recommended me angling mine downward since it was above my TV.

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Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm really thrilled with the sound and picture, and overall it's exactly what I wanted! Of course an RF-7 II set-up would be perfect, but since the viewing wall is only 11 foot, the 82s sound fantastic.

The RC-3 is actually pointed at about my chest. I have a 1/4" board under the front of that $10. shoe rack I'm using for a stand. It's a reasonably agreeable solution for the time being.

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The RC-3 is actually pointed at about my chest. I have a 1/4" board under the front of that $10. shoe rack I'm using for a stand. It's a reasonably agreeable solution for the time being.

That should work fine. It's often difficult to determine angles from photographs.

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That looks great, that screen is huge. Yes

Looking at pic's of your room makes me want a dedicated room, very nice.

So how does it sound ?

The room is 11'X24' and was designed to be two basement bedrooms before code required escape windows. The screen is 110" diagonal. It was the largest screen I could fit, but it only cost me $250.00. The picture in combination with the Epson 8350UB is beautiful.

We blocked out the three windows with wood blackouts and painted them to match the walls and added two sections of dimming canlights. I can only do a row of three chairs due to space, and row 2 will have to be 8.5' across to allow the doors to open. We sound-proofed where there wasn't concrete, but the red soffitt houses the A/C for the theater and the bedrooms directly above. When listening at reference level you can hear it in the bedrooms. Every other room in the house is silent.

The sound is Amazing! The dual subs present a great depth in the soundstage. The chairs have a mild butt-shaker effect from the woofers that I just adore! The surrounds add to the experience in a fine way, but they probably need to be lowered a touch or tweaked to improve imaging. Now the front three, well they aren't timbre-matched and the center ain't pretty, but they sound dynamic and clean! The action transitions effortlessly across the screen and voices are beautifully detailed and crisp at any volume or action scene I've thrown at it.

I still have things I want to do to improve the experience, but for awhile I'm going to sit back and enjoy!

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I still have things I want to do to improve the experience, but for awhile I'm going to sit back and enjoy!

I don't blame you, the improvement thing can never end, just enjoy for now.

Really it's the best way to go, spend some time in there and over time you will find where you would really want a change. It's easy to want to change something but sometimes it really don't make a huge difference, something will stick out eventually as the weakest link.........it always does.

Nice room, makes me want to add a room, I have to stop thinking like that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Debuted the Home Theater for extended family last night...parents, brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Scooched an old couch and a rocker in as second row seating and comfortably sat seven. We watched the new Harry Potter film as it was family friendly enough to be enjoyed by all, but also offered a good selection of material that worked out the speakers. My bro, sis-in-law, and niece were wowed! My Mom and Dad initially thought it was a bit frivolous to spend $8000.00 to put a movie theater in the basement, but at the same time, they were mightily impressed that a "better than movie theater experience" could be put in ones home for less than $20,000.00, in fact my Dad was individually pricing components to see if he had the available bank roll to do something comparable. All-in-all it was a great time had by all, and I'm glad that I have a reason to bring family up to my home (due to my industry, my wife and I are transplanted 1 hour away from our entire families). My sister and her family are going to make the journey soon and my brother is planning a return trip.

Prior to the movie, I made two MAJOR upgrades to my theater...and they were free! I turned off the receivers loudness limiter which was muting some of the action scenes, and more importantly I checked my BR players set-up. As it turns out, the default mode was sending all of the sound decoding to my receiver as "stereo." My receiver was then decoding the stereo sound and attempting to send it out as 5.2. A simple switch from stereo to by-pass and the end result to this change was that my surrounds came alive! I thought that they might be positioned too high, but no, they sound phenomenal right where they are!

Happy 4th everyone!

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Well if you just think of it as spending 8k it initially sounds like alot. but one way or another you would have had a nice 2 ch setup for music at the least, with the extra speakers you can now watch movies also with great sound.

If you subtract what you would have spent without being a dedicated room there is not a big difference, and everyone can enjoy it.

"Prior to the movie, I made two MAJOR upgrades to my theater...and they were free! I turned off the receivers loudness limiter which was muting some of the action scenes, and more importantly I checked my BR players set-up. As it turns out, the default mode was sending all of the sound decoding to my receiver as "stereo." My receiver was then decoding the stereo sound and attempting to send it out as 5.2. A simple switch from stereo to by-pass and the end result to this change was that my surrounds came alive! I thought that they might be positioned too high, but no, they sound phenomenal right where they are!"

Wow that should have made a big difference.

I don't have HDMI so I have the BR connected with 6 separate wires (6.1) and I just hit the 6 CH input, it seems to do a good job, sounds better than just having it in DD or DTS. My receiver does not have the new codes for BR, I guess I need a new one, one day, probably a week before they come out with the next greatest thing.

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This is my first HDMI receiver and it didn't occur to me that the BRDP would be encoding everything in stereo. Everything was obviously working, but the sound wasn't moving in from behind like it should. That is fixed. The volume limiter was just decreasing loudness relative to the volume. I had to turn down my subs after I disabled that function.

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I don't have HDMI so I have the BR connected with 6 separate wires (6.1) and I just hit the 6 CH input, it seems to do a good job, sounds better than just having it in DD or DTS. My receiver does not have the new codes for BR, I guess I need a new one, one day, probably a week before they come out with the next greatest thing.

My NAD T773 receiver does not have HDMI either so until I find a better sounding HDMI receiver or pre/pro that will trump the T773 in sound quality and is in my price range, the NAD stays put.

Bill

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great looking room corn.

what mounting hardware do you use for the pj? it looks like it's pretty flat against the ceiling. i could use a couple extra inches to raise up the pj.

Thanks! I used the PCMD for the 8350. They make models for several pjs and it comes in silver, rather than the gold pictured in the link. I bought it because I mounted to the back of the main support beam running 6.5 foot off the ground and needed a 90 degree flex option to keep the pj as close to the ceiling as possible, and this one worked perfectly for a very reasonable price. I don't have issues with it shifting out of place, but if I touch the pj (to turn it off or focus) the mount doesn't hold it completely still. Otherwise it's great.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=epson+8350+mount&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=822&wrapid=tlif130978327056910&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=17320917909256497359&sa=X&ei=7bQRTrOtG4nZ0QHH9MW-Dg&ved=0CDsQ8gIwAQ

Here's another one I considered to keep the pj close to the ceiling:

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=chief+rpa+168&hl=en&prmd=ivns&biw=1259&bih=818&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&wrapid=tlif130201757978510&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=7740564497126480782&sa=X&ei=RjabTeyxC8LTgAf82qmXBw&ved=0CFcQ8wIwAA

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