Please Help! THX Ultra 2 in a small room see pics

[LebanonKlipschFan]

I have a system I am going to be looking to sell in the next 6-8 weeks, I am selling 2 kw-120, 1 KA 1000, 3 kl-650 and 2 ks525. If you are intereted shoot me an email at mikepbrowning@hotmail.com

[Stimy]

Why are you getting rid of these?

[colterphoto1]

Uh, ya, pretty much everything DrWHo said about installing speakers tight with stuffing in the wall cavities, using the 525 wedge surrounds when close by (they're fantastic- I heard them at Klipsch listening room),

[sfogg]

First off, nice looking room!

To add to what has been said....

As far as your sides (and maybe even your rears) have you considered mounting the in walls in the ceiling?

Putting the sides in the ceiling should let you move them forward without compromising the look of the fire place. I'd think about getting inwalls that have adjustable driver positioning and sort of aiming the 'side's to reflect off the side walls. Mount them close to the side walls in the ceiling so they are sort of firing down the side wall. That should give better coverage and a somewhat better positioning then sticking the sides in the rear of the room. Not really a fan on speaker in the ceiling but in your case I think that may be a better fit then what you are looking at now.

Because your rear row of seating is right up against the rear wall (mine is too) make *sure* you go with some wide dispersion type of speaker back there. You will need it to get good coverage on your rear row of seats. I use RS-3IIs and still get good rear effect even in my back row of seating. The effect isn't as good as when I'm sitting in the front row of seating but it still is obviously rear info.

Good luck!

Shawn

[colterphoto1]

'of aiming the 'side's to reflect off the side walls'

Good idea Shawn.

I helped another member do something like this who had swivel mount RVX (?) mounted on the back wall right by his head, we swiveled them to bounce off the ceiling, instant beautiful surround.

Using side speakers mounted in the ceiling and then riccocheting the sound off the side walls would give a nice 'wrap' of sound from an apparent large sound source. That's what you want in surrounds, nice diffuse sound, hard to do if speakers are close by your head.

M

[sfogg]

"Because your rear row of seating is right up against the rear wall (mine is too) make *sure* you go with some wide dispersion type of speaker back there. You will need it to get good coverage on your rear row of seats. "

BTW, the other option you might consider is mounting a more convential in wall speaker in the side walls right at the corner for your rears. Mount them fairly high up so that they won't be as distracting to the people sitting in the corner seats. They will in effect fire across the rear wall at each other to give the rear effects. Having some spread between the rears is a lot better from a psycoacoustic standpoint then having rears close to each other on the back wall.

These were a coupl e of the ideas I was considering with my room but I couldn't really use inwalls because of the staggered stud construction. Also I didn't want those big sound leaks in the room.

Shawn

[Stimy]

Thanks for your ideas! I am going with the ULTRA THX 2 system so I would hate to disrupt the "THX" standard and do the ceiling mount. I hope the new inwall THX U2 will perform awesome. I think the inclosed box around the back will help with the "sound leaks" maybe not time will tell. Should I go with the inwall surrounds on the wall above the fireplace or the 525 normal inwall. I think its called the kl-7800 and ks-7800.

Sterling

[sfogg]

Fit a system to your room, don't go with something just because it is 'THX' or not.

" or the 525 normal inwall"

Is the 525 a dipole? If you can't be on axis with them you won't be in the null and they won't work as intended.

Shawn

[DrWho]

Oh wow, I like Shawn's idea of the surround speakers mounted in the

cieling for the side surrounds....I would just go with a surface

mounted KS-525-THX:

(pic is a link to the info page).

These would work real well because half of the speaker will be firing

at the listening position and the other half would come off the side

wall and help to establish greater depth and soundstage. (So it would

be mounted so that one side is slanted to the wall and the other

slanted to the listening position - it'll take a little bit of trial

and error to find the perfect location). You could even get a little

more creative and play around with rotating the speaker. I think a

diagram would make more sense...I'll draw one up later.

Going that route I would do a similar thing with the rear surrounds too - so as to better timbre match the system.

Ya know...there are a lot of HT's that have the listening position up

against the rear wall. I'm surprised klipsch hasn't come out with

something specifically designed to be used in some kind of alternate

method like this.

[colterphoto1]

Who, I think he was just talking about regular in-walls, mounted in the ceiling, with the rotatable tweeter aimed so as to bounce off the side wall and give wide dispersion pattern.

Wouldn't your concept creating timing differences between the direct and reflected sources (the dreaded Blo$e syndrome- LOL)

M

[Stimy]

the THX ULTRA 2 in-walls dont have a swivel or rotatable tweeter. its ether the KS-7800 or the KL-7800

[Tom Adams]

IMHO I would suggest you dump the notion of 7.1 in that room. For it's size, I think a very good 5.1 would out perform a so-so 7.1. Remember....there's only 5.1 information (so far) on DVD's. Anyhow.....I firmly believe that side surrounds, correctly placed will yeild a very good results.

FWIW, my room is 28 feet deep and I run a 7.1 system. The front row sits 13' back into the room and the back row is around 12' from the rear wall. My speaker setup was done with my rat shack meter just behind the front row seats. My thinking being that I want the front row to be able to take advantage of the rear surrounds and the back to row to be able to hear the sides. Sometimes, sitting in the front, I get a decent pan from very far back (rear surrounds) to the front. But most times, it's the sides that are creating the illusion. My point is that if it weren't for the depth of my room, my experience says a 5.1 or even a 6.1 would've been just fine.

Keep it simple I say. Besides, the money you save going 5.1 can be put into those motorized recliners. []

Tom

[sfogg]

"Sometimes, sitting in the front, I get a decent pan from very far back

(rear surrounds) to the front. But most times, it's the sides that are

creating the illusion."

What processing are you running? Not all is created equally.

FWIW I run 7.3 in a 9x17 room. My processor has a 7/5 button on the

remote that goes from 4 surrounds down to 2 (sides) at the touch of a

button. 7 gives a more complete rear soundfield then with 5

speakers even in my small room. With just 5 the holes in the rear

soundfield are obvious.

Shawn

[Tom Adams]

"Sometimes, sitting in the front, I get a decent pan from very far back (rear surrounds) to the front. But most times, it's the sides that are creating the illusion."

What processing are you running? Not all is created equally.

FWIW I run 7.3 in a 9x17 room. My processor has a 7/5 button on the remote that goes from 4 surrounds down to 2 (sides) at the touch of a button. 7 gives a more complete rear soundfield then with 5 speakers even in my small room. With just 5 the holes in the rear soundfield are obvious.

Shawn

Ahhhhhh......but because you can make those comparisons, you know what you're missing. He, OTOH, doesn't have anything up & running yet. So how would he know what he's missing if he didn't know what it was that he's missing (assuming something would actually be missing)? And what if what you're hearing as "missing" was just your perceptions which could possibly be different from his perceptions?? Huh? Huh? Answer me that one mister. [] [] [] []

Seriously though....while I believe what you say about your setup, my brain tells me that logically, with so many speakers, that close together, not only will the sound cues get mixed up, the delay times for the surround info would be so small (since the distance from each speaker to the listening position in his room is darn near equal) that he'd never really be able to take advantage of 7.1 due to his seating being back against the wall. OTOH, were his seating away from the back wall by 3 or more feet, then I would think 7.1 could be accomplished.

Again....it's just MHO that for his size room and with the seating arrangement he's constrained by, I think he'd be able to dial in a 5.1 system much easier than having to deal with all sorts of reflections and cancellations from his surrounds being in such close proximity to each other.

But what the hell.....wouldn't be the first time (or the last) I'm wrong! []

Tom

[sfogg]

Tom,

"Answer me that one mister. "

Thats why you put in 7 from the get go. If he ends up liking 5 better it is easy enough to turn off the rears in the processor.

Much harder then adding in 2 more speakers down the wire when the room is complete.

Likely though with a good setup with 7 speakers (and good processing... Logic 7 or DPLIIx) I tend to doubt he would prefer 5 over 7. It could happen of course though.

"not only will the sound cues get mixed up, "

True, room treatments are a *must* in a small room. My room was *horrible* (as expected) when I finished hanging both layers of drywall. Very bright and loads of echo. After being treated it settled way way down and sounds very good now.

"the delay times for the surround info would be so small"

Any decent processor will time align all the speakers together to the listening position such that actual arrival time is the same. Some also offer additional adjustable offsets to the rear channel delay to electrically 'move' the speakers further away from the listener. Those that doen't have that can be tricked into doing that by changing the speaker distance values in their time alignment setup.

Shawn

[Stimy]

Thanks for your input. I have been thinking about the 5.1 versus the 7.1. My room is pretty small, and I'm sure I will be happy with both scenarios. I'm definitely going to wire for 7.1. Even if it I don't use it. My equipment, right now currently is a Marantz AV 9000 preamp and a Marantz MM9000. it sounds great for 5.1 surround sound, but if I go to 7.1 I will probably upgrade to a NAD preamp and use my same amp

along with a 3 x 200 Acurus amp I have laying around.

As far as sound treatments go. I have been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the best scenario. I want to cover my walls in fabric, but not the ugly fabric you see on wall panels. I'm thinking about covering my walls in red suede. I'm wondering if anyone has ever wrapped fabric around soundboard. My room is small, so I do not want to use thick dampening material. The thinner the better,I have been looking at that acoustic quilt, they sell it on eBay for around 130 bucks. It's very thin and has a great acoustic value. I thought about stretching my fabric over a frame and covering that quilt that will be stapled to the wall. I was walking around Lowe's the other day, and I came across this soundboard stuff. I was wondering if anyone has ever used this product, usually you put drywall over at the top of it, but I want to just cover it in fabric. Maybe it'll work maybe it won't.

one more quick question in the back wall I want to fill in the widow with foam. I'm wondering if that will help anything out. I was just planning on sheetrocking over the widow hole. If I can use it for a base trap or something else that would be a lot better. Any thoughts would be fantastic.

Thanks so much for your help and your time!!!

Sterling

[TheSoundBroker]

As far as sound treatments go. I have been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out the best scenario. I want to cover my walls in fabric, but not the ugly fabric you see on wall panels. I'm thinking about covering my walls in red suede. I'm wondering if anyone has ever wrapped fabric around soundboard. My room is small, so I do not want to use thick dampening material. The thinner the better,I have been looking at that acoustic quilt, they sell it on eBay for around 130 bucks. It's very thin and has a great acoustic value. I thought about stretching my fabric over a frame and covering that quilt that will be stapled to the wall. I was walking around Lowe's the other day, and I came across this soundboard stuff. I was wondering if anyone has ever used this product, usually you put drywall over at the top of it, but I want to just cover it in fabric. Maybe it'll work maybe it won't.

EEK! God no to the suede! [] First off, there are two important reasons you see acoustic fabrics used on side walls. First is that there are acoustic treatment products behind them and in order for them to be even reasonably effective the sound energy needs to be able to pass thru at all bandwidths. Suede will reflect most of it back, causing nasty high and midrange imbalances. Do not assume that because you have a small room you won't benefit from good acoustic treatments. Just the opposite in fact. A smaller room will often have much bigger problems. The Ultra 2 system was designed to work best in a treated space and will make a huge difference. The second reason to use acoustic fabric is that it won't reflect sound and cause more problems. The acoustic quilt is quite frankly useless and the sound board material isn't wide enough in bandwidth. What you want is to create a fabric stretch system and put the right acoustic materials behind it. Two products are pretty much considered the best for reasonable $$$ for this type of application...semi rigid fiberglass (ala OC 703) and duct liner (ala Johns Manville Linacoustic). Both can be had in 1" and 2" thick sections. You want to treat the bottom 50% of your wall with this type of product and then use a high loft polyester batting above that to fill in the space. If you don't like the look of acoustic fabric (by the way...a good poly grille cloth works well too, I found a great source for it for cheap), then de-emphasize it by building some millwork grids onto the wall. The millwork does two things for you...it gives the wall a very interesting three dimensional component, and it hides the seams meaning you don't have to be perfect.

As for your Ultra 2 setup, I'd prewire for 7.1 but do 5.1 for now. Most of my setups I do 7.1 to cover more than one row of seating. In a small space, if you correctly adjust the side dipoles, you should be able to get good bounce off the back wall to help cover in the acoustic gaps. A good laser alignment will help tremendously with this (all dealers SHOULD do this when they sell an Ultra 2 package). Occasionally I'll go to a 6.1 setup with a ceiling mounted inwall center to fill in with a small room setup with close rear seat placement. This, by the way, isn't far off from what THX is now recommending with the Advanced Speaker Array setup. Both rear monopoles are placed nearly together and centered. This is also one area where acoustics can help. Most people think in terms of absorbtion when they think acoustic treatment...but diffusion can be just as powerful. If you have a big hole in coverage in a closely spaced rear seat with a set of dipoles...don't just think more speakers...think acoustic diffusion to help redirect some of the energy out of the rear wall primary reflection point. If done judiciously, this can have a HUGE impact and save you from having to jump thru hoops trying to figure out where to put more surrounds.