Basement HT Finally Finished (Pics)

[dtximages]

Construction

[dtximages]

Sorry cant find the construction pics.. you get finished product

[dtximages]

Rear wall

[picky]

Wow! I really like the wall color you chose. It looks so different than what so many other have chosen to use. It's almost a copper color. Very nice! The room looks like a nice size. How large is the screen and what sort of projection do I see tucked away in the ceiling? You certainly own a lot of Klipsch products. I think I see a bunch of Heresy IIs in the theater. Could you provide a list of the equipment just used in the HT? Did you use on of your subs? Thanks. Nice job! -Glenn

[lakedmb]

Nice theater! 

Is that a Cord-a-Roy bean bag off to the side?

[Canadian_Dude]

I see at least one sub there! Aren't you worried about rattling one of those beautiful speakers off?

[oldtimer]

Really inviting and comfortable looking, and I love your Klipsch collection. Man, I wish I had a basement, if I ever get around to building another house we plan to have a walkout style basement.

[dtximages]

THanks guys i appreciate it. Its been my project over the past several months. The speakers include:

Front: Chorus II on bottom / Forte II on top

Center: Forte I

Rear: Quartets

Sub: Velodyne HGS 18

Screen: Carada Brilliant White 126"

Projector: Panasonic AX100u

I have a two channel upstairs with: Cornwalls and Klipsch SW 15 sub

Bedroom: Klipsch kg 5.5 front and kg 3.5 rear

Garage sitting there: La Scalas I have two LS cabinets waiting to be refinished.. i really dont want to do it.. so theyre for sale... I have all the components for them too.

[el jopez]

Have to agree with olditmer, it looks simple yet pleasing. Color choice is excellent. Have you considered adding foam to the walls for sound treatment or curtains?

[dtximages]

yeah i have to add some room treatments.. you can see my other post about bass traps in the 2channel forum. i dont want treatments to take too much away from the look of the room yet at the same time im not willing to have subpar sound either. ill have to find a good compromise. actually, no, there is no compromise on sound. ill find a way to make it sound great and look good. im stuggling with how though. anyway, its alot easier to do this kinda thing when youre young and unmarried! can anyone vouch for that?

[el jopez]

ahm, Yes! So far what I personally have amassed has been due to being young, foolish and unmarried. Had to throw the foolish bit, its unnecessary but sure as h*ll fun! Grant it I dont have the space I'd love to have for a HT room, but that too is coming, in maybe... whenever I enter and leave grad school. Sure hope I don't have to sell anything afford it []

[dtximages]

Yeah i know what you mean. My girlfriend tells me that shes fine with all the huge speakers etc.. We all know how that will change if we were to get married. That wont be anytime soon though. I wont be able to afford a ring since ill be paying for all the Macintosh i want to buy one day.. Onnneeee fine day.

[MatrixDweller]

I bet the concrete block wall plays havoc with the room acoustics. Is that a shared wall?

That rusty orange color is really nice. Looks really warm and inviting with the lighting and is a good contrast to the black front wall and green in the room. Very nice!

How does it sound?

[dtximages]

The concrete walls are good/bad. theyre good because they dont resonate like drywalls, theyre solid not shared. However, i put three shag rugs down to dampen high frequencies some. im still looking into room treatments that look good. i ahve a large discussion about bass traps in 2 channel section. i have a dead spot in that listening position.. it disappears when i move the couch forward about 12 feet from the screen, or back about 21 feet from the screen.

any cheap suggestions on good room mods for basements.. oh and the ceiling is open, no insulation, plainted black.

[Professor Thump]

Congrats on your new HT room! It looks great.

I would guess you are getting some nasty flutter echo from the left/right walls. Cinder block does not absorb much sound at any frequency, but it is a little better than poured concrete. Depending on your budget there are several things you can do to improve the acoustics of the room. The easy things to start with is speaker placement. You mentioned that you had Klipsch Chorus II on bottom / Forte II on top for your fronts. I would have to look at the data but I am willing to guess that the horns project a 90 x 40 or 90 x 60 degree polar pattern. With this being said you may want to minimize sound projecting to the walls by placing them sideways as in your Avatar. This allows more sound to project in the vertical plane (away from the walls). The horns may be too low now so you may need to elevate them by several feet. I am not sure if you have enough room to do this or not due to the width of the room and the screen width. They will also match your center channel dispersion more closely. If you try a sideways placement experiment with putting the horns to the outsides to make the image wider. The sound stage is probably too narrow from looking at the pictures, depending on where the center couch will reside. I normally try to avoid multiple HF horns in the same bandwidth due to comb filtering effects. With the speakers on their sides you can line up the horns so they are next to each other which will minimize the dimension between these sources and push the comb filter cancellation frequencies higher.

BTW... it would be good to tilt the center channel up a bit to minimize floor reflections and also because the speaker crossover was voiced at zero degrees axis, so the frequency response should be flatter.

Now you may have minimized the flutter echo with speaker placement but you can go further by treating the surfaces of the room. Your first surfaced that is easy to treat is the ceiling. Stuff that turkey with your favorite dampening material. The best is fiberglass insulation. If you get the paper lined insulation make sure the paper is towards the ceiling so the sound hits the fiberglass first. You can also use closed cell foam (reticulated cell). After you have stuffed the ceiling you can do what Trey Cannon has done and lay dark cloth on the ceiling rafters to make it look better.

You can now add several diffusors to your selected areas using the mirror method. Have someone help you with a step ladder. Move the mirror to the place you think you might want a diffusor and lay it flush on that surface. If you can see one of the front speakers then this is an acoustic reflection point and a diffusors would be good at this location. Rule of thumb if you have at least 10% of the ceiling with diffusors you will notice that the room will sound bigger. It is hard to put too much diffusion on the walls, but you want to treat any large flat surface area if possible. Next work on the side walls for diffusor placement. You will need one at the first reflection from the side wall since this is a significant one due to the speaker being close to this wall. You can also put them on the floor but that is not very practical since you will be tripping on them. Your carpet will help to dampen this reflection.

What material do you use for diffussors. If you want to spend money on manufactured diffusors go to Auralex or RPG.

See http://www.auralex.com/sound_diffusor_minifusor/sound_diffusor_minifusor.asp

Auralex is more cost effective but RPG's are really cool looking. You can also have great success if you make them yourself as I have done. Any solid material will work that is reflective. Wood is best but heavy to hang on walls and ceilings. Another solution less durable is styrofoam. RPG diffussors are made out of styro which is poured into a mold. Since I would guess you don't have a diffusor mold you can buy sheets of styro or another solid core material. Take the big sheet and cut smaller strips and glue them together. Vary the wide and height of the strips to vary the frequency the diffusor reflects. Trey had a good idea to take those noodles you float on in your pool. They come in cylinders that you can slice in half and mount on a surface. And they are colored. This could be expensive but it is the end of summer in Indy so they may be on sale.

Some wives, ahhh most wives would prefer some decor on the walls so you may have to get crafty and use a book shelf or afgan to spruce up the decor. Also large objects like guitars, duck decoys, collectable beer cans or Peyton Manning signature footballs will work for diffusors, it just gets expensive. (Hey maybe that is how I can justify another guitar. Honey I need this Les Paul because my wall need more diffusors. Doesn't that reverb bother you? Listen closer. There... Hear it? Thanks Forum Guys ...)

Now addressing the most expensive problems.... Low Frequency standing waves. The bass nodes are a bigger problem to correct because the wavelength is so large. Start by adding several inches of foam to the back of the diffussors and fill any corners you can with foam or bass traps, (as the other thread discusses). This will deminish the room reverb at these frequencies also. The next thing that is most important is to move your listening position, as you have done, and move the sub around the room. A better way is to use two subs in different parts of the room. This makes the room modes less of an issue. The subs should be unsymetrical in the room so you don't duplicate any mode.

The most important thing to do is HAVE FUN! Life is too short not to enjoy your HT system.

Good Luck on your adventure...

Keep Thumpin'

[SCOOTERDOG]

Nice job! Its so cool when you can throw your own little movie party and have a theater to do it in. Colors are very nice but really look at getting some treatment on your brick walls. As mentioned the Auralex is good stuff without killing your budget.

Enjoy!

Scooter

[lakedmb]

You could always build your own acoustic panels.....

I did and I love the final result.  I'm going to build some more when I get the chance.  Total cost was around $100 for six 2x4ft panels.

[STUDIO 2000]

clspruiell - I think it looks great. You did a great job, and those speakers stand out!

I am still in the process of converting a regular room (upstairs), into a home theatre/media room. I have to seal off a window, and just built a frame and insulated it.

I have just completed my own acoustic panels too. I purchased 96SF = 12 panels of Knaupf Rigid Fiberglass board. You can use rock wool too. I purchased this in a 1 inch thickness, and then just layered two such boards for bass traps at 2 inch thickness. I bought my fabric at Hobby Lobby and Walmart. The total project for the panels + fabric cost me $160. I have just completed it this weekend.

I received several quotes online and the lowest cost came to around $1800, and that is excluding a diffuser that I am interested in building. I think you can do much room treatment for little money, and there are quite a bit of different fabrics out there that are open type weave but that look very pleasing to the eye.

Good luck,

Dave