Thanks guys, I built this 7.1 system up from practically scratch, and it sounds pretty damn good. All in all I spent about 6-7k, which includes modifications to the living room including turning the fireplace into an AV rack.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but my 5-disc collector's edition ID Disk is lit up and sitting on the front right speaker

DrP Wrote: Kaisergrendel Wrote:Thanks guys, I built this 7.1 system up from practically scratch, and it sounds pretty damn good. All in all I spent about 6-7k, which includes modifications to the living room including turning the fireplace into an AV rack. I don't know if anyone noticed, but my 5-disc collector's edition ID Disk is lit up and sitting on the front right speaker Wow, looks awesome. Looks like you spent a lot of effort, time, (and money) to make this a really great looking/performing home theater. True congrats! I not only like the equipment setup but I like the general look of the room and the color scheme. Very tasteful. Do you have any pictures of the room build, I am wondering how you did the work of converting the fireplace into an AV rack? What kind of room lighting do you have, it seems from the shadows that you have multiple ceiling light sources... once again, it compliments the room nicely. I bet that collector's edition ID disk looks even cooler when it's lit up in the dark. Very nice!

Thanks, I think it looks a little ratty in the current configuration because of the retrofit, but thanks for the kind words.

I'm working on a timelapse video of the refit and will take some extra photos once I've reverted the setup to 5.1+HDTV to show you exactly what I've done

DrP Wrote:I think it really looks nice (and not "ratty" at all). One question. If you have a 7.1 setup now, why would you want to go back to 5.1? There are quite a few movies with 7.1 soundtracks now (including Tron:legacy) and I find that even with 5.1 encodes, the 7.1 setup gives a better soundstage.

Thanks, I've cleaned up the place and will make some final adjustments before taking another picture, then you'll be able to see what my original plan was.

Well a few reasons. While it pains me to give up the enhanced envelopment of 7.1, the room won't allow it. I have to move the couch out off the wall to provide space for the speakers to operate, losing over a foot of room as wide as the couch is. Even more room lost when I have to organize stands for the large bookshelves that become the side surrounds in 7.1. That space between the couch and wall is hard to reach and difficult to clean, and the entire space is a bit convoluted and constricting in this arrangement. With 5.1, I still get surround sound, and everyone is happy with the way the room looks.

DrP Wrote:It's always a push and pull thing with squeezing speakers/equipment/furniture into a room. I can see your point. You can always consider buying some small rear wall mountable speakers. These would not take up so much space and you wouldn't have to give up the 7.1 setup (although larger speakers would give better performance obviously).

My current ones are small enough to mount on the wall, and I have considered it, however they'd have to fire straight down the surface of the wall to reach the listeners. I imagine that would be more harmful to the sound stage and proper localisation than not having them at all.

DrP Wrote:Prior to building my home theater room I had the same space problem. Having everything in a small room made it very tight (too tight). It was not until I had the 500 sq ft room to spread everything out and the number of speakers became a no-issue.

Yeah, congrats to you, I'm still working towards that point

I usually watch it on my Laptop, with the earphones plugged in.

Whenever I go to bed & fancy watching a movie, I plug my Laptop into the electric socket (because it just drains the life out of the battery otherwise! :/), plug in the earphones and switch off the light.
Then I can just lie in bed and watch any movie I want.

DrP Wrote:It's one thing to go to the store and buy nice things, but when you go through the trouble of designing and building something that is unique and serves your desired functions better than anything store bought,... well that's something else.

I completely agree. The project started because I realized my parents were endlessly butting heads over which direction to take the room in. My dad didn't want the TV rack to be in a permanent central placement in front of the fireplace for symbolic reasons, and my mom wanted above all a neat look and maximum space. I on the other hand was tired of looking at the TV sideways and needed a proper place to set up my AV equipment. We almost ended up buying a cabinet that wouldn't have suited the place in any dimension and a poor compromise at best.

One day I decided to draw up a 3D model of the living room. The design went through a few revisions based on the idea of incorporating the fireplace with a sliding element. That really helped us visualize an end result and agree on a decision. Looking back now, I think our disagreements actually resulted in something that any one of us could imagine.

That corner cabinet pictured there is yet to be built. It's very hard to convince my mom to allow me to use more space, so I built the acoustic panels as a trial for her ears. The idea is to use an acoustic panel as the door of the cabinet, allowing you to use the gap behind the panel as extra storage space. I'm no acoustics expert but I'm told that this would only minimally impact the performance of the absorber.

DrP Wrote:I really like how the room came out overall. The wood motif looks really nice and everything matches. The wooded floor is beautiful and it seems like everything matches this wood motif. Cabinets, fireplace, component rack, furniture, even the light fixture. Very nice.

Oh yeah. This is the third family home we've moved into, and I made sure my parents understood that nothing should be done to the living room before I've had a look at it. Before this the home design method was based on messy compromises and blind, directionless choices. CLU notwithstanding, some dictatorships can work

DrP Wrote:The rail for sliding the TV and cabinet out of the way was shear genius. Also, the custom built fireplace front looks very nice. When you were talking about not staining it, I first thought, why not? But after looking at more carefully, the unstained finish actually matches the speaker cabinets really well.

Yes, looking at it now I'm quite sure staining the trim would have taken the focus off the cabinets. I have to say designing and building the rail was the most fun I had

DrP Wrote:You also did a really nice job with the cable management. Sometimes it can be really difficult to run all those cables, especially in a smaller space and hide them away from site. Clearly this room is not just a home theater, but also a living room area so other aesthetics need to be considered. You don't want anybody tripping over wires! Once again, great job.

It helps that the room naturally hides the majority of the runs. I did research on the wisdom of bunching power cables and speaker wire together, and after some time I got the general message that you would have to make a intentional effort to create the right conditions for artifacts to creep in. You can't see it in the pictures, but my dad's record player sits inside the cabinet at the back. I hooked it up to my system and let him listen to it, and that was all the convincing he needed to let me remove his stock speakers and permanently link the record player to my AVR.

DrP Wrote:It's nice that you have the capability to switch to projector/7.1 setup if needed. This gives you the versatility of going "all out" for special occasions... like a party viewing of Tron: Legacy! Frankly, I think it is a great system even with 5.1 and the smaller screen.

Indeed, and I inaugurated the home theatre by inviting friends over for a 7.1 Tron viewing I got many requests to play another movie, or play it later in the night, but I didn't budge. I wanted to see the Grid again and I wanted it LOUD.

DrP Wrote:And one last word about the youtube video... my god... that is one of the best room built videos I have ever seen. It really does a nice job of showing all the love and care that went into the speaker and the room build. Top marks, all around!

Thanks, that really took the most effort, not because it was that difficult, but the fact that I had to set up the camera before moving on to each new step. The room build part took a camera shooting in timelapse for the better part of 3 months.

My sincere thanks again DrP, you've shown me more appreciation than all my friends and posters from other audio forums have combined!