How do to get my theater in this shared wall townhouse....

[loganschleich17]

Hey guys,
I’m here truly looking for help. I usually use audio forums for conversation and light advice but to me this is serious. Smh...
So I pulled the rip cord and got engaged recently to a woman in a suburb in the twin cities of Minnesota. I ended up selling my single family home in Lincoln Nebraska and in about 10 days we are moving into a town home in Apple Valley, MN. The house is very nice but the living room is the only space for a HT and its longest wall is shared with the connecting homes living room. ( there’ll be photos of the living room in this post)
My old system was a pair of VR3 mains, VR920 cc, Sony sscs5 surrounds, 2 jbl studio 550p subs and last year I purchased a denon 3400. This setup is nothing amazing but even this mediocre set up resulted in me falling in love with audio , and I am grateful for the person who donated those VR3s (in perfect condition) to Salvation Army 3 years ago that started this whole thing. Best $24.95 I ever spent.... lol but truly.
So I have a decent amount of $ i would like to spend on a new system from selling my home in Nebraska. (At least 5K But, my one yet MASSIVE concern is getting evicted and or having complaints made of the noise.
If there were no worries of disturbing neighbors I would want at least a 5.2 HT set up. Probably dual PB-2000s or SB-3000s and research the hell out speakers to buy, so I could create my own mini theater. I am almost exclusively movies/tv/sports. Maybe 5% music.
So I need advice on what I should buy so I can still have that HT experience but not be evicted. I want my bass to reach low so I experience the full range , so I was thinking I could just keep the sub volume on a much lower level and buy a svs, rhythmic,hsu, or outlaw sub. I don’t think dual is necessary at the moment. But I do not know where to go from there.
I’m really hoping to get help on buying the best system ( sub(s), speakers, amp if necessary, room treatment) without crossing that line that has me being kicked out in the first week. So if my only solution is getting the best system for my budget I’ll do that , but if you have any other solutions I would really appreciate your input.
Thanks
Logan

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[WaynePflughaupt]

Sorry, but unless there is a thick cement wall between the two, there is no way you will be able to live in a place where the living room wall is shared by the neighbor, and have them not hear your system, especially if there is a subwoofer involved. It’s kind of like saying, “I want to go swimming but I don’t want to get wet.” You can’t escape physics, and new equipment will not change that. You’ll either have to live with limited volume levels and bass, or bail on that place and get a free-standing house instead.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Well, welcome to mn. Apple valley is a great area. I would say Wayne is right, unless you’re lucky and the house is constructed with attention keeping sound transmission down. My friend lived in a condo down there with a modest but potent theater. He was pretty good with the volume control during certain hours just in case. One thing he did was talk to the neighbors and found out what a good volume level was that wouldn’t intrude any worse than the traffic going by. Can’t say if the construction was comparable at all to your townhome but ...
This is a tough one for sure. I would talk to the neighbor if possible and see if there’s a way to get what you want without getting the boot. I have a nightmare neighbor and it changes everything. Luckily he’s only part time here.
Good luck!

 

[snakeeyes]

You probably want to shift your money to tower speakers and large center and use a small sub since the sub volume probably won’t be up very high with a shared wall.

Good luck!

 

[everettT]

What is the other bedroom/s being used for?

 

[loganschleich17]

So the wall is a “ fire wall” the property manager said. And the 2nd bedroom could be anything. Would probably put an office there but are you thinking about setting a system up in there? It’s pretty small but I’m open to suggestions.
So the opinion is that they’ll hear anything no matter what? I mean I’m in a tough place because idk where I’ll be a year from now so I don’t want to purchase a system based off a 1 year lease. But you think even keeping it at relatively low volumes and getting quality items would be heard as well? I’m just feelings clueless atm because the idea of upgrading and getting a real system really excites me and I can’t go back to my Vizio m-65 c1 built in sound.
I wish I was of more help and had more information but that’s why I turned here. Thanks for the responses though, I appreciate it.
I added photos of the 2nd bedroom btw

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[davidscott]

The Garage looks to be pretty far away from the shared walls.
Nice looking place and hope it works out home theatre wise.

 

[TLS Guy]

Welcome to the Twin Cities metro.

I would give you encouragement that you can build a good system in your new home.

The restrictions you are working under will force you to build a good and properly balanced AV system.

This multiple powerful sub craze in nonsense and leads to a banal unbalanced vulgar sound. Yes, vulgar and I mean it. In my youth it was all HF fizz tish and shout. Now the pendulum is all boom, bang and thump. Although polar opposites neither is high fidelity balanced sound. Subs are actually the most dispensable part of a sound system. Certainly what I'm hearing at systems on offer today is NOT balanced. They are ghastly freak shows.

You say you want to watch mainly movies, TV and sports. For that the real priority is to have a system that can faithfully reproduce human speech with clarity at a natural volume without coloration or shout. Systems that can do that, are in my experience incredibly rare. So right off the bat they are no good at telling a story intimately.

For your needs the most important attribute is that it can tell a story. Movies and most TV programs are about telling a story and therefore a system than can really make it seem you are eves dropping on the characters is the most important attribute for your system, not how big the gooey and totally unnatural bass is.

The miss use of subs in my opinion is now the biggest factor in producing poor quality reproduction.

So you do not need to annoy your neighbors with subs. All this money and trouble devoted to the last octave is miss placed until more attention is paid to more important parts of the audio spectrum.

I'm going to return to the all important attribute of appropriate balance in audio systems. You need to tune your ears to the sounds of your environment. Good systems faithfully reproduce the sounds of our everyday experience.

I am now living very close to you at Eagan.

We are now getting down to one residence form two. We sold our beautiful lake home on Benedict Lake in May. We also have a town home in Eagan, which we have now vacated and that has been on the market for just over a week. We have just moved into our newly built home in Eagan 12 days ago.

I'm in the process of rebuilding out the AV room from Benedict. I have the system my wife wanted up and running in the main living area. I have the family room system up and running and hope to have the main AV room up and running in two to three weeks.

Now we had a very nice system in our Town home condo. It had a shared wall. My wife loved that system and we never had a complaint from neighbors in 11 years we owned it.

The drivers you see were in sealed enclosures, the speakers contain two 9" Morel sub drivers in isobarik second order coupled cavity configuration with F3 in the mid twenties. The sound was nicely balanced and we played it at realistic natural levels without complaint. They were good enough that the last time a close friend heard them he upgraded his B & W 800 Ds, to the B &W 800 D3s the following week!

So achieving a good natural and balanced sound should not require annoying your neighbors.

So "my wife's" system has moved to the main living area of our new home and is filling a huge area with a newly designed in wall system. One 10" driver is filling this huge space with balanced bass.

This system is now up and running. I will post when the trim is complete. I picked up the polished metal trim for the speaker system today and will install it tomorrow. The powder coated trim for the equipment cases will be ready at the end of next week. I will post more pictures then.

If you want to get in touch, as will live just a few miles away, I can help you if you want when the main AV room is complete in two to three weeks. You are welcome to PM me.

 

[Irvrobinson]

This multiple powerful sub craze in nonsense and leads to a banal unbalanced vulgar sound. Yes, vulgar and I mean it. In my youth it was all HF fizz tish and shout. Now the pendulum is all boom, bang and thump. Although polar opposites neither is high fidelity balanced sound. Subs are actually the most dispensable part of a sound system. Certainly what I'm hearing at systems on offer today is NOT balanced. They are ghastly freak shows.

I'm glad to see you aren't mellowing a bit in your old age. I'd miss the entertainment. Although, and I don't mean to scare you, there are actually many people who like unrealistically powerful bass. My personal favorite quote of the year so far from someone listening to my music system: "I don't care if it's accurate if it doesn't sound good." Not everyone has the same taste in audio.

You say you want to watch mainly movies, TV and sports. For that the real priority is to have a system that can faithfully reproduce human speech with clarity at a natural volume without coloration or shout. Systems that can do that, are in my experience incredibly rare. So right off the bat they are no good at telling a story intimately.

This isn't true at all. Even the $600/pair Klipschs I use in our HT system make speech very intelligible, each speaker sitting a foot to the side of a 70" LCD screen, and without a center speaker. We sit 12 feet away. Lots of other speakers can do this same trick; they are not incredibly rare. Which leads me to a question: if your speakers are so good, why do they need a center speaker?

So "my wife's" system has moved to the main living area of our new home and is filling a huge area with a newly designed in wall system. One 10" driver is filling this huge space with balanced bass.

Perhaps, but you're using a custom-built, custom-designed transmission line enclosure. Most of us are stuck with commercial offerings. Personally I suspect there's nothing wrong with well-designed ported or sealed subwoofers, it's a matter of system integration and tuning. Even your sub could be misused in the wrong hands.

 

[TLS Guy]

Several points.

First I know there are those who like a lot of bass. That is not high fidelity reproduction, nor is it accurate reproduction. Its a personal affectation and more of a craze than anything else. Bottom line is, it is bad sound, whether people like it or not. Funnily enough this is something Audyssey does well and sets bass balance perfectly.

As far as speech is concerned, I maintain there is a huge difference between intelligible speech and intelligible and natural speech. It is having both together that is so unusual.

As far as the center is concerned, the system does not really need one. I have been using it just two channel when that is the stream or source. The center is only used when there is an actual discreet mixed center source. To be honest, I just wanted to design a really good center in case others would like to build it.

I did learn something really interesting about integrating center three ways with two way mains, that I really should have realized before. This is such an important point, I'm going to make it the subject of its own thread.

As far as TL subs are concerned, they really are in a league if their own as far a true natural uncolored bass is concerned. Trouble is very, very few have heard properly designed TLs.

Lastly I'm going to post more pictures of this system on the build thread now. It is fished except for the trim on the equipment cabinets. The framing is in a powder shop. The speaker trims I picked up yesterday after having them electroplated. I installed it all this morning.

 

[Irvrobinson]

As far as TL subs are concerned, they really are in a league if their own as far a true natural uncolored bass is concerned. Trouble is very, very few have heard properly designed TLs.

Personally, I think that unless I travel to MN to see you, I'm unlikely to hear TL bass (and not the mass-loaded version) for myself.

I've actually been wondering about this as I've read your posts over the years. How is this superiority measurable? If a subwoofer has flat frequency response to 20Hz, low harmonic distortion (e.g. less than 10%) at the volume levels they will be used, and inaudible group delay, how would one hear the difference between well-designed subs (or bass units of any speaker) whether they are ported, sealed, or TL? Bass is omnidirectional, so most of the differences we hear in full-range speakers seem unlikely to exist when frequency response and distortion are similar. Audible coloration should easily be measurable, even with as crude a tool as REW or OmniMic.

I understand that TLs have very substantial efficiency advantages over sealed bass sections and subs, but with Class D bass amplifiers power looks a lot cheaper than TL cabinetry. Isn't the low frequency roll-off the same for sealed and TL, at 12db/octave? Sealed group delay is low. Distortion may be higher near max output, but for big sealed subs I suspect that's more a measurements "drag race" trade-off than a limitation in actual usage.

 

[TLS Guy]

The issue is resonance. An FR by no means describes a sound system. I could make you a speaker that had a perfectly flat FR but was totally unlistenable. You would not even understand speech. I have pointed this out before.

The issue us that a TL will still produce output when critically damped. If you do that to a reflex ported box it totally kills it. The problem with a sealed box, is that as you lower the Q of the driver, F3 rises, and you end up having to use insane amounts of EQ, to the point where the driver is totally stressed.

So with a TL you can damp it to the point where it is no more resonant to the ear than an open box. This is known as critical damping. Then add to that the encircling nature of pipes as organ builders call the phenomenon and you have a bass system that sounds like no other.

 

[Irvrobinson]

The issue is resonance. An FR by no means describes a sound system. I could make you a speaker that had a perfectly flat FR but was totally unlistenable. You would not even understand speech. I have pointed this out before.

The issue us that a TL will still produce output when critically damped. If you do that to a reflex ported box it totally kills it. The problem with a sealed box, is that as you lower the Q of the driver, F3 rises, and you end up having to use insane amounts of EQ, to the point where the driver is totally stressed.

So with a TL you can damp it to the point where it is no more resonant to the ear than an open box. This is known as critical damping. Then add to that the encircling nature of pipes as organ builders call the phenomenon and you have a bass system that sounds like no other.

I understand damping, but poor behavior would show up in waterfall plots and burst tests. Looking at the AH review of the SVS PB-4000, just to pick a review of a ported sub at random, and looking at the burst test at 31.5Hz:

It could be cleaner, though James commented that he felt the PB-4000 operated in "a very controlled manner". Is it your contention that the hash measured here would be lower with a TL sub, and that the difference would be overtly audible?

 

[shadyJ]

I understand damping, but poor behavior would show up in waterfall plots and burst tests. Looking at the AH review of the SVS PB-4000, just to pick a review of a ported sub at random, and looking at the burst test at 31.5Hz:

View attachment 32003

It could be cleaner, though James commented that he felt the PB-4000 operated in "a very controlled manner". Is it your contention that the hash measured here would be lower with a TL sub, and that the difference would be overtly audible?

Firstly, Irv, bravo for using those graphs! Glad to see someone is paying attention. Secondly, could it be cleaner, yes; it could be absolutely perfect with no distortion or noise whatsoever. Here is what a theoretically perfect measurement would look like for that:

But the PB-4000's burst performance at 31 Hz is really really good. You can see there that, at the maximum drive level, the highest order distortion, the 3rd harmonic, is still 20 dB down from the fundamental. That would be inaudible. Take it down by just a couple dB and distortion quantities fall dramatically to the point where we are talking like less than 5% THD. Anyway the point to all of this is that while you can have less distortion, it doesn't matter because its all below audibility anyway.

 

[loganschleich17]

Several points.

First I know there are those who like a lot of bass. That is not high fidelity reproduction, nor is it accurate reproduction. Its a personal affectation and more of a craze than anything else. Bottom line is, it is bad sound, whether people like it or not. Funnily enough this is something Audyssey does well and sets bass balance perfectly.

As far as speech is concerned, I maintain there is a huge difference between intelligible speech and intelligible and natural speech. It is having both together that is so unusual.

As far as the center is concerned, the system does not really need one. I have been using it just two channel when that is the stream or source. The center is only used when there is an actual discreet mixed center source. To be honest, I just wanted to design a really good center in case others would like to build it.

I did learn something really interesting about integrating center three ways with two way mains, that I really should have realized before. This is such an important point, I'm going to make it the subject of its own thread.

As far as TL subs are concerned, they really are in a league if their own as far a true natural uncolored bass is concerned. Trouble is very, very few have heard properly designed TLs.

Lastly I'm going to post more pictures of this system on the build thread now. It is fished except for the trim on the equipment cabinets. The framing is in a powder shop. The speaker trims I picked up yesterday after having them electroplated. I installed it all this morning.

Thanks for replying to my post
Any suggestions on good places near us for listening tests to find what I really want?


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