Building New Home - Entertainment Room

[rjnjlhuber]

We are building a new home with an entertainment room. We want to use Klipsch but do not know which speakers to use. Please help.

[htxpert]

Hi

We can help you but we need a little more info

#1What is the size of your room and its characteristics:

shape of the room and how the floor plan is laid out (including openings and windows, be specfic, this will tell us if your room can accommodate inwall, on wall or floor standing speakers in the right locations).

#2 What are your performance expectations?

Do you want absolute gut wrenching jaw dropping

WOW effect with 5.1 or 7.1 multichannel sound tracks?

Or is "That sounds very good" enough for you?

#3 What is your design criteria?

Are floor standing towers and a large center ok with you

and can your room accommodate them? Or do you want something less obtrusive like bookself speakers on a stand? Or do you want the least obtrusive like inwall inceiling speakers? Do you have the ability to install these? Also are you going to want a 5.1 or 7.1 system?Again, can your room accommodate a 7.1 system?

#4 Set up, correct design and correct speaker placement is the key for good multichannel performance regardless of the speakers you select. Your room is the single most important factor in how your system is going to sound. It is best if you can design the system to best suit the room.

#5 what is your budget for speakers? The majority of your

budget should be directed to speakers. Speakers are the second most important factor in how your system is going to sound. Klipsch provides huge bang for the buck. They are very efficient and sound very good with a wide range of electronics. An example of this is, you can take the top of the line Klipsch Reference Series speakers and mate them to a inexpenesive receiver and still have a high performing system. This level of performace cannot be achieved by other speaker manufacturers with the same

low cost receiver.

I hope this will guide you in your persuit of audio nirvana.

[rjnjlhuber]

Htxpert:

Our room is entertainment room connected to pool room area.The ceiling is 9' high. Media area is 30'8x 22'8 with one double door opening to go out onto florida room, opening on other side of room for hall to storage area.

The Media room has a fireplace on one corner and on the opposite corner we plan to mirror the image, but use it for subwoofer and small tv. These two corners will be made of cultured stone. Behind the mirrored wall is where the entertainment closet will be (you access this from the storage room). This room also has a entertaining bar with a 4'x 3' pass thru window. Flooring is laminate flooring with throw rug.

Space between rooms for division is 15'9.5, then Game room is 14'8 x 15.9.5.

We would want speakers to extend coverage to Game room but we want most impact to be in Media room. We plan to drop a soffit between the rooms for speakers for more impact. We definetly want jaw dropping WOW and 7.1 - I do believe our rooms can handle it. We prefer in wall and in ceiling speakers.

Our budget for speakers will include total home audio along with our home entertainment area. We want to use Klipsch and need help deciding the best speakers for each situation and what mixers and amplifiers to use. We have been looking at Marantz.

[Joe Shmoe]

Watch where you put your mirrored wall in relationship to your speakers... kind of creates havoc with the sound waves bouncing all over.

[michael hurd]

Can you possibly submit a rudimentary drawing of the room? Not that it has to be exact, but it's pretty hard to figure out what you have. From an installation standpoint, klipsch does have commercial theater speakers, and in-wall speakers from the reference line. That said, the in-wall products will have a clean look, but will not perform as well as a floorstanding speaker.

[michael hurd]

For jaw dropping 5.1 you would be better suited to use the commercial theater speaker from klipsh, the heritage speakers, and lastly the reference 7 package. Klipsch does have a thx certified system coming out, designed for in-wall usage, but does not have any more acoustical output than the reference bookshelves, mated with two large subwoofers. I don't feel that this will satisfy your need for " jaw-dropping " performance. The lascala, and the belle klipsch models would probably match your performance requirements, but they are neither small, nor inexpensive units.

[JohnA]

Jaw-dropping comes from good sound. You will also be quite unhappy with all those hard surfaced in a media room (cultured marble and mirrors). The room will be exceedingly reflective in the high frequencies. Think about how a cinema is furnished; soft walls and furniture.

The Heritage Line will sound like what you want. You have enough room for big speakers. If you don't use K-horns for fronts and rears, you will need one or more monster subwoofer(s).

[Lone Palm]

Go to Your Klipsch dealership and listen. Any Kliopsch speaker is miles above the rest. Get the best you can afford. As far as Subs go remember that there is very little music content below 50hz unless you are listening to pipe organ music. In my opinion subwoofers are a passing phase and muddy the sound. Gut wrenching bass is impressing but not very musical.

[marksdad]

john is right, with your room size you need big speaks, remember speaks in show rooms sound different in your own listening environment, all of those hard surfaces and lack of corners almost put the cornerhorn out of the question, unless you build false corners. but do go large. a room that size deserves cornwalls at least, heritage, is there any other?

[rjnjlhuber]

Our mirrored wall will be cultured stone, just like the fireplace. It will also contain a small tv and subwoofer.

[rjnjlhuber]

Michael:

When is the new THX speakers coming out. Our house is in framing right now. Any speakers you could suggest that could go in cabinet and in soffit around media room.

Rita

[rjnjlhuber]

Lone Palm

We are not huge bass beleivers. I prefer a good clean crisp sound and well balanced. We also want our room so if music is playing you can still talk.

R

[soundog]

The Khorns sound great at any level and the bass is as clean and natural as can be ... use either LaScalas or Heresy's as sides with either a LaScala or Belle as the center channel.

[htxpert]

Man I can see it now A Klipsch head working at a high end

A/V shop and Miss Whitmore comes in looking for small

speakers for her apartment You all say K-Horns will do just fine And yes we can find a way to mount those to your wall just put a vase of flowers on them to hide them into your decor

Back to the install

It sounds like you want a multimedia room (dual purpose)

Home Theater and Entertainment I would break this room into 2 sections and concentrate on one section at a time even though they will be working together

For the Home Theater part of the room I would use

Inwalls RCW 5 For the Front,Center,Rear and EX channels and I would use dual RSW 12 for the LFE

I know most of you will scoff at this but keep this in mind

What were his design and performance goals he had two requirements

#1 He wanted Jaw dropping performance

#2 He wanted speakers that were unobtrusive

you must as a custom installer listen to both very carefully why ? there are many reasons here is just one

maybe he has a significant other that said Ok dear I will let you turn my sewing room into a multimedia room but I don't want to see any of those big clunky speakers in there Or if he does allot of entertaining

they may want to keep the floor space as sparse as possible

With that in mind we may have to compromise just a bit to obtain a performance/design balance

Ok with the inwalls and the smaller size of the RSW 12 we meet the aesthetic part of the requirement but what about performance Hmmmm. Lets think a moment here with a room this size are his guests going to be

enjoying the system in the back of the room ? probably not ,viewing from that distance will be difficult

and most folks will migrate to the rear of the room to talk and enjoy other things That's why even though his room is one large room I would divide it into two sections The RCW,RSW combo will be more that capable in the first have of the room ( It will hit reference level and beyond) and will give you jaw dropping performance at your listening positions and meet your design goal will it sound like a K-Horn system No it wont but it will sound very good if installed correctly. Now for the other part of the room I would install RCR 5 or RCR3 I would use a good pre amp or receiver for the main Home Theater and use its Zone 2 preouts to drive a multichannel amp I would use

VCs (Volume Controls) in the part of the room where the RCRs are being installed so you can control

the volume independently from the rest of the system This will also allow you if you so desire to run two different types of media at the same time Home Theater in front music in back or do one through all the speakers for Karaoke ect.... and you can place a pair or two of All weather speakers outside with

a VC if you have a pool or entertaining are out there Go listen to a pair of RCW 5 at a dealer

and then decide if it will meet your performance requirement chances are it will

Also keep in mind it is very hard to design a system just using a basic room lay out

a Face to Face with a competent installer that can see your room and consult you would be of great

benefit even if you did the install yourself using the consultation can save you from costly mistakes

before during and after the install

[soundog]

You have a good point, but I guess it's a matter of focus. He said he wanted "jaw dropping wow!". I guess the first thing an installer would have to tell this fellow is : "You are NOT going to get 'jaw dropping wow' from small unobtrusive in -wall speakers". "You can get some good sound but you can't have your cake and eat it, too." They might be ok for movies but when it comes to music they will fall short in terms of clarity, soundstage depth, realism, etc., etc. If he wants a samll TV with a system in one corner of the room that will be unobtrusive and will play low he could get a "home theater in a box" but if he wants jaw dropping wow that will take a lot more.

[michael hurd]

I just did a search on the thx ultraII system. The topic had come up a while ago, and according to bob g, and trey cannon ( moderators ), the system will be shipping in january. Accoding to them, it will be available at custom install centers and reference dealers only. Hope this helps. If you have questions about this system, please direct them to Bob G, and Trey Cannon. The system is under a pilot manufacturing run, and is in pre-production right now.

[htxpert]

"You have a good point, but I guess it's a matter of focus. He said he wanted "jaw dropping wow!". I guess the first thing an installer would have to tell this fellow is : "You are NOT going to get 'jaw dropping wow' from small unobtrusive in -wall speakers". "You can get some good sound but you can't have your cake and eat it, too." They might be ok for movies but when it comes to music they will fall short in terms of clarity, soundstage depth, realism, etc., etc. If he wants a samll TV with a system in one corner of the room that will be unobtrusive and will play low he could get a "home theater in a box" but if he wants jaw dropping wow that will take a lot more".

This is hardly the case We just completed an install with

5- RCW5 inwalls We put foam back boxes in-between the studs

and activly crossed over the front Left and Right speaker

with 2- 12 " subs The system when completed sounded very close to a RB-35 system It played loud and clear with no distortion and sounded excellent for 2 channel and multi channel media Please name one HT in a box that will hit reference and beyond with no distortion.The client's brother has a Klipsch system RF-3 RC-3 and RS-3 That we installed He said it sounded almost as good as his system and he would have went

with the inwalls if he had known they sounded that good

The RF-3 RC-3 and RS-3 will give you jaw dropping performance and so will the RCW based system if installed correctly

It may not be mind bending performancelike the Heritage but I can tell you it will crush any HTB system and a lot of high end tweaky

systems too I did say that when you are installing a system there are some decisions that you must make regarding performance/design.Go listen to a pair of RCW-5 that are installed correctly and then make your decision

[soundog]

NO distortion? There has never been a speaker made that has NO distortion. Some have less than others; some have considerably less than others; NONE have NO distortion.

Some think the little Bose cubes and sub have a great deal of "jaw dropping wow" power - just go to one of their demo rooms and observe the reactions of some of the people. My point is that at low levels, in a corner with a small TV, so unobtrusive that they won't interfer with conversation; doesn't call for something that would produce "jaw dropping wow".

But, IMHO in a room this size, if you want something that sounds like it would in a theater or concert hall you need speakers similar to what you would find in a theater or concert hall. In short, the Klipsch Heritage speakers. The speakers you suggest would be a fine compromise but they would be a compromise that would not produce what I would consider "jaw dropping wow". But, then, maybe I just have higher standards for defining "jaw dropping wow".

[htxpert]

"We are not huge bass beleivers. I prefer a good clean crisp sound and well balanced. We also want our room so if music is playing you can still talk."

Did I miss something?

Soundog,

Better get thoese ears insured if you can hear distortion

levels in the loudspeakers we are discussing at or below reference levels Yep his room is too big the guests at the rear of the room dont have a sweet spot

I give up ! Put some VOT's in there that will do it.

Footnote: Talked with my rep todays he said January for the THX system. Bob may know more about this

Happy Thanksgiving

[soundog]

If one system of loudspeakers reproduces a recording in such a way that the instruments seem to be "in the room" and "very real" and the other does not seem as real and have the same presence and realism, I would say the first has less distortion then the second. I'm not knocking the Klipsch in wall speakers but I'm sure I'm not the only one who hears a significant difference between the Klipsch Heritage loudspeakers and the Klipsch inwall reference speakers. Remember this fellow was asking for a "jaw dropping wow" experience.