High School Theater gets converted to Klipsch!

[cyclonecj]

I would show the other side, but we were unable to run the wires inside the wall. As a guess, we think the conduit between the two j-boxes is disconnected, so I have our wiring specialist coming by on tuesday. But we connected them & mounted them for testing.....[]

Colter.... You were right about one thing. Playing all of the surrounds alone was unbelivable, but the fronts are so far up in the air, there was a BIG delay between them & the surrounds. Not a problem... we have a digital processor, we just need to do some setup work.

The overall sound is unbelivable..... It could easily be the best sound system I have ever heard in an actual theater in many years........ & I say that knowing it still needs major work....

BTW... I can not say enough about the KPT-250's. I honestly think they would easily blow away my Heresys. Clarity is excellent, bass is even good, very smooth overall.... I really like this speaker!

I also have to thank David from American Cinema Equipment...... He really knew his stuff, as well as how to take care of his customer. The job could not have been better.....

[cyclonecj]

Piranha.... Thanks.... I cant wait to start tinkering!!

I have to figure out what to do for a surround processor for the next year or so..... I think I spent all my money for this year!

[Tom Adams]

Thanks cj for the reply and the pics explaining why you "laid them down". I didn't realize what mounting system you were using and thought you would "fly" them like what I'm use to seeing. Which is to say the speaker would be hung such that downward adjustment would be possible (hope that makes sense).

Tom

[texxas guy]

Awesome setup! I fully expect you to walk in one day and find some students doing some serious "rocking"!!! LOL Oh, just doing some sound checks , sir............[] Wish we had that system back in my old high school days. Congrats!

[colterphoto1]

photo 250 side- NICE! Those look awesome hanging on the walls. Bet the sound is going to be fantastic once you get it all set up.

M

[bhendrix]

Great job, cyclonecj! How well do you think the KPT-250's would match with K-Horn's, LaScala's, or Cornwall's in a home theater application? How much are the KPT-250's?

[colterphoto1]

bhendrix, the 250 is basically a Heresy in a ported wedge style cabinet. It would be an awesome surround speakers for use with a Heritage setup.

Michael

[cyclonecj]

Actually, I am not sure if it would be a good match or not... I want to

bring a pair home next week & put them up beside my Heresy's &

find out. It's real hard to tell with it hanging on

the wall, but as a guess, It seemed like it would walk all over

the heresy, even on the low end. Strange thing, the 250 is only

rated down to 65hz!

[bhendrix]

Heresy II is only rated down to 63Hz

[colterphoto1]

either way, they'll make great surrounds, you're probably going to set them up as SMALL and crossover at 80Hz anyway, right?

Michael

[DrWho]

The 250 is a ported speaker so it's output is probably a bit stronger in the 80Hz range and it will also have a little resonance at those frequencies (because it takes time for the port to spit out sound)...the end result is a slightly fatter bass response than a sealed enclosure with the same F3.

For HT I find that the heresies sound better set to large...the sealed cabinet design controls the woofer excursion so there isn't much of a decrease in distortion by setting them to small (if anything, setting them to small makes them roll off too early). But since the 250's are ported, I would be much more inclined to run them as small because the woofer becomes unloaded below the tuning point, which means excessive cone movement and not much volume (which means lots of distortion). Also, the slower roll off of the heresy matches that of room gain, so placed in a corner the heresy will have a much flatter and deeper response than the 250.

In other words, the heresy is much better suited for use at home.

I had one question about this school setup...are all the side/surround speakers on their own independant amplifier channel? Cuz that's just mega cool if they are [H]

A temporary solution you might consider for watching movies in there would be to get a reciever with analog pre-outs...then just patch them into the correct circuits. It might be fun to experiment with the yamaha recievers that have the "front effects" channel and run those to your side surrounds closest to the front (which would really aid in the front stereo image).

Later on down the road you might consider getting a bank of inexpensive delay circuits....just a 1 slot unit that only does time-delay compensation (You can get them for pretty cheap nowadays, but the problem is finding them as most of the newer products have way too many bells and whistles). You could wire these as inserts into your patchbay so that you can turn time delay on and off simply by inserting/removing the insert cable. You aren't always going to want to delay the signal - and having this flexibility would be such a powerful training tool. I know you're not there yet, but I would also highly recommend that you be very cautious with all the "system controller's" on the market. The majority of audio installation companies don't have any experience with them and usually just go with whatever makes them the most money (most depressing, I know). But what many don't realize is that these controllers ultimately determine the fidelity of the entire system (you are afterall running all the audio through it)....and the majority of them out there are just awful sounding. It seems you found a good company pretty far away so I would very highly recommend running all purchases through the guy that helped with your current design (don't settle for someone else on their crew either - you'll want the guy already familiar with your setup). Just a little heads up - I've "been there done that" with the crappy audio installers and it's still something I struggle with (I help out with the audio at my church and the guy in charge of everything insists that the "professional companies" know more - not to be cocky/arrogant, but that simply isn't the case with the majority out there...seems 2 years later you're learning the same thing too).

[cyclonecj]

I had one question about this school setup...are all the side/surround speakers on their own independant amplifier channel? Cuz that's just mega cool if they are

Actually, since we do training of a whole new crew every month, I had ALL of the surrounds connected to a patch panel only. We already have 1 QSC amp available for effects, There is another available that I am removing from the old 5 speaker front setup, & I will be adding 1 more on the next budget. All of the effects amps will be patch-in only. The only hardwired amps are the front L-R, & I am still trying to decide what to do with the front center.

As for the processor, & again, until the next budget comes around, & will be using my old Yamaha DSP-E300 pro logic processor just so we have something to play with. It has the front effects outs that you were talking about.

David was telling me about the delay moduals you are talking about. I may look into that, but I have to wait & see what happens when we start doing the actual balancing of the system.

If I had to call it, we do about 60% plays, 10% chorus, 5% band, & 5% movies, & the rest just misc speakers, using 1 mic feeding the center speaker. Chorus & Band do not use the sound system, since the room is so small.

[DrWho]

They make LCR boards with a dual panning system that lets you pan to any combination of the three....used mostly in church settings where the main vocals come out of the center and then music out of the L+R. I doubt you could trade in your current board for such an option though. Here's an example of such a panning system:

http://www.allen-heath.co.uk/US/DisplayFeature.asp?view=19&p=ML5000&id=5

Another alternative would be to use the subgroups...strap the LR main out into mono and then use a pair of submasters for the LR speakers. Or you could just flip it around (use the LR main for the LR speakers and then a single submaster for the mono center).

If your board has a mix B/matrix system then you can just run either mix off of the matrix output. I'll have to go look up your board to see if it has this funcationality, but most newer boards do now (especially anything with more than 4 subgroups).

You can even run an aux send to the center cluster too, but then you run into issues of pre-/post- EQ and fader, not to mention you no longer have the advantage of subgroups (unless you've got VCA's).

[cyclonecj]

Whoops.... sorry... I did not make that clear in my last post. I only meant that I have not decided if I want to hardwire the center to an amp, or add it to the patch board. The current mixer handles it fine. As far a extra outputs, it has 2 monitors, 2 FX, 2 aux, 4 submasters, 1 masters B, plus a few more that I dont remember.....

We actually looked at the Allen Heath board when our other school added one, but decided this board would do better for us.