Struggling to make final decision and keep in budget

[Savage40]

Also, there wasn't a peep about room treatments or anything about the room's acoustics. Carpet? Hardwood? Glass?

Might be tough to add passive room treatments on this budget, but I'd sooner take less expensive speakers that are still good in a well treated acoustic environment over more expensive speakers in a really bad acoustic environment, so I wouldn't rush to get "better" speakers without at least taking some passive room treatments into consideration.

What kind of acoustics are you referring to?

 

[Savage40]

Why do want the Emotiva surrounds?

What speakers have you auditioned?

Why the Epson PJ & motorized screen?

I was at the understanding that while surrounds are nice, they are not as critical as the rest. The Emotiva surrounds are reviewed well from what I have seen and seem to be a good speaker for $249 a pair, $500 for all 4.

The only speakers I have auditioned are Boston Acoustics, B&W, Paradigm & Polk.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

You're saying that a 300w 12" sub will put out the same output levels and the same impact as a 600w 15" sub? That seems unlikely.

Brian, the owner & creator these Rythmik subs, is the one who said that the FV12 has almost the same output as the FV15 from above 20Hz. The FV15 has more output from 14Hz-20Hz.

 

[FirstReflection]

Brian, the owner & creator these Rythmik subs, is the one who said that the FV12 has almost the same output as the FV15 from above 20Hz. The FV15 has more output from 14Hz-20Hz.

Just on this note...it's the FV15, NOT the FV15HP. The FV15HP has significantly more output at all frequencies vs. the FV12 or FV15. The mention about the 600Watt amp version refers to the FV15HP, so no, the FV12 cannot match the output of that beast!

 

[FirstReflection]

Well, it seems I left quite a bit out of the equation and did not even consider a lot of what has been asked since I last posted. I will try to clarify a bit more.

The room is 16x24, not that large, but a decent size room. The room is carpeted with a 6" tall 6x12 platform at the rear of the room. It is pretty much a perfect rectangular room with no acoustic treatments of any kind.
I have 2 rows of 3 power recliner seats and have not purchased anything else for the room.

After the fire, I realized what an opportunity I had to start things off right and I ran flex pvc tubing all over. I had to do it then as once the spray-in expanding foam insulation was sprayed in, it became almost impossible to run new wires in any exterior wall. The room is wired for 7.2, although I do not necessarily need to have 7.2 right now.

Projector: Someone asked why I was going with the Epson. Well, the reviews are pretty darn good and another good reason would be that I can get the Epson 6010, which comes with an extra bulb, quality mount, 2 pair 3D glasses, extra year of warranty and next day exchange warranty for less than $2,500.

The screen I am considering is the Visual Apex 120" which reviews well and seems to be a great screen for $899.00(Tab-tension, motorized with wireless trigger etc) I am open to suggestions on screens which would not go past $1000.

Thanks for getting back to us with the info!

It's very important to realize that your room is 50% of your sound system. Sound does not particularly like to change mediums. When vibrations meet the boundary of a new medium (like sound waves in the air meeting the solid walls, ceiling and floor) a great deal of the energy gets reflected by that boundary, rather than continuing through and into the new medium. In other words, there are echoes and lots of sound bouncing off of the walls, ceiling and floor of any room!

The particular ways in which sounds are bouncing off of your room's surfaces constitues your room's acoustics. Certain sound waves are going to bump into each other and cancel each other out. Certain other frequencies are going to bump into each other and double up to create a much louder wave at that specific frequency! And there is also the amount of delay between the direct sound wave that comes from the speakers straight to your ears vs. the sound wave that reflects off of the wall, ceiling or floor first and thus, takes a longer path and a longer amount of time to reach your ears. In other words, all of the reflections create a ton of interference! It's the reason your bathroom sounds totally different from your living room. Every room is unique and all of the cancellations, amplifications and delays/echoes determine your room's unique "sound signature".

If you eliminate ALL reflections, you get an anechoic chamber. It is extremely off putting to a person to stand in an anechoic chamber. We rely on sound cues far more than we realize to get a sense of our surroundings. With no reflections or echoes, we can't tell where we are, and it is actually disorienting as our brain desperately tries to match up the size of the room that we see vs the size of the room that we "hear", or in this case, don't hear. And since they don't match up the way our brain expects, we get disoriented!

So we don't want a room that is so heavily dampened that it literally becomes unpleasant just to be in there! But we also don't want so many reflections and especially those big dips and peaks or the long delays/echoes that serve to distort the sound. We want nice, linear response with no huge dips or peaks. And we want the direct sound to be significantly louder than the reflected sound so that our brain has no trouble at all telling direct from echo.

For the dips and peaks, pretty much all of the problems in that regard are in the bass. The first line of defence with one subwoofer and one primary seat is to find a spot with the fewest cancellations and peaks. With two subwoofers, you alter the interactions between bass waves significantly. You will reduce the number of large peaks and nulls, but you still have to be careful with placement. You will still get some big peaks and nulls with 2 subwoofers, and if they happen to occur at your seat, well then that isn't a big help! 4 subwoofers allows you to be less critical of placement. You still don't want totally random placement, but 4 subs spread rather evenly around the room delivers generally flat and even bass at almost any seat. 2 subs with careful placement is almost as good though, so if you can place them well, that's the most cost effective solution

The passive room treatment that can help to reduce big peaks and nulls in the bass are "bass traps". These are just really thick absorption panels that help to reduce the strength of some of the reflections. Since the strongest reflections occur in the corners of your room (where there is sound bouncing off of two walls and the ceiling or floor in close proximity), you generally want to put bass traps in the corners first. That's where they'll have the most impact on your room's acoustics. The edges of your room are next, due to having two surfaces very close to each other.

For the direct vs. reflected sound - that can have a significant impact on things like dialogue intelligibility, imaging, soundstage and just how generally "clean" the sound from your Front 3 speakers sounds at your seat. You want to either absorb the strongest reflections, or scatter them. Either way, you want to reduce the strongest "first reflections" (see where I got my screen name? ) so that they are significantly quieter than the direct sound coming from your speakers. To find your first reflection points, sit in your primary seat and have a friend hold a hand mirror along the walls. When you can see a speaker in the reflection of the mirror, that's a reflection point! The spot closest to the speaker is the first reflection point, and you're going to want to put an absorptive or diffusive surface there. Also, don't forget about the same spots on the ceiling and floor!

You can get a nice package of bass traps and absorptive panels from Gikacoustics.com for about $700 . GiK also has really great diffusion panels. Acoustimac.com also sells great absoption panels and bass traps that sometimes cost a little bit less than GiK's

 

[FirstReflection]

What's the ceiling height? I'm going to guess between 8 and 10 feet for now. Within that range, you've got between 3000 and 4000 cubic feet of volume. So a "large" room by THX standards.

If you like to listen loud - as in close to the 85dB average with 115dB peaks in the LFE as specified as "reference level" - the a sub like the Rythmik FV12 just isn't going to cut it. As much as I love that sub and think it's the best $500 sub at the moment, it just doesn't offer quite that much output. Might be enough if you don't listen that loud though.

I'd highly recommend going with a pair of subs in your room. You've got a lot of seating area, and this is a dedicated room where you should be able to place the two subs well enough to create nice, even response without too many huge peaks or nulls at the seat. 4 subs would be nice, but there's the budget to consider

With a 24 foot room length and two rows of seats, I'm going to guess that your primary seat is in the first row and about 16 feet or so from the front wall? Your 120 inch screen size would be perfect for that distance. I'm guessing that's not an accident

Your front speakers are going to be a little over 4 meters away I would guess. While the rule is to subtract 6dB of output for every doubling of distance, that refers more or less to an anechoic, or at the very least, an open field with only the ground reflecting sound. In an actual room, even with absorptive room treatments on the walls, you lose more like 3 or 4dB with every doubling of distance. Let's be on the safe side and say 4dB.

So we have to look at what sort of output and amplifier power you'll need. If we take something like a 90dB at 1Watt/1meter efficient speaker, it'll be producing around 82dB with 1 Watt of power at your primary seat. At the very least, 78dB with 1 Watt. That's not bad at all. You'd only need 2-6 Watts of continuous power to reach the 85dB average for reference level playback and only 200-800 Watts of peak power for the 105dB reference peaks in the speakers. But that's a fairly efficient 90dB/1Watt/1meter speaker. Plenty of speakers are 86dB/1Watt/1meter or lower. Now you'd need a little more than double all of those figures to hit reference.

Let's say you get the $700-ish GiK room kit plus a couple of diffusion panels from them too. You're looking at somewhere around $1200 for that once you include shipping.

Let's get you a pair of highly capable, deep output subs. Some good candidates would be the SVSound PB or PC12-NSD, the HSU VTF-3 MK4 or the Outlaw Audio LFM-1 EX. Once you factor in shipping, they're actually all about the same price at around $750 each - so around $1500 on the subs.

Denon's 3312 should have ample power provided you go for fairly efficient speakers. What're we lookin' at there? About $850?

So we've spent, what? Around $3500 already? Doesn't leave a heck of a lot for speakers out of $5500 does it?

Still, you'd have no trouble affording something like the Emotiva ERD-1 surrounds on clearance for $250 with a really nice front soundstage like the Ascend Acoustics CMT-340 SE mains and CMT-340 SE center at $794 shipped right now. Could get the dedicated stands for the CMT-340 SE mains as well, which make them look like towers I'm a big, big fan of Ascend's CMT-340 speakers. That SEAS tweeter they use is WAY above its price point in terms of sound quality. Highly efficient and high output - they'd have no trouble in your room with just the Denon powering them.

Should leave just enough for a decent disc player and remote! Not enough to get a good UPS Battery Backup power protection from APC though. If you want power protection, go APC. No question. The J35B is the best deal, although it's only got 8 outlets and only 6 of those are battery backed up. The J15BLK is the one I really like most. 12 battery protected outlets. And if you wanna go all fancy like, the S15BLK is sweet. Around $500 for the J15BLK if you search online. Totally worth it, IMO. Especially for a projector (to protect the lamp during a power failure) and for any DVR (let's you keep recording during a black out!) or anything with a hard drive or cooling fan (keep 'em spinning!).

Hope that helps!

 

[Savage40]

What's the ceiling height? I'm going to guess between 8 and 10 feet for now. Within that range, you've got between 3000 and 4000 cubic feet of volume. So a "large" room by THX standards.

The ceiling is 8ft, so I am sitting at about 3,100 cubic feet.

If you like to listen loud - as in close to the 85dB average with 115dB peaks in the LFE as specified as "reference level" - the a sub like the Rythmik FV12 just isn't going to cut it. As much as I love that sub and think it's the best $500 sub at the moment, it just doesn't offer quite that much output. Might be enough if you don't listen that loud though.

I'd highly recommend going with a pair of subs in your room. You've got a lot of seating area, and this is a dedicated room where you should be able to place the two subs well enough to create nice, even response without too many huge peaks or nulls at the seat. 4 subs would be nice, but there's the budget to consider

I did not even consider going 2 smallers subs vs the 1 larger one. Would 2 12's still be better than say the FV15HP from Rythmik? I kind of wanted to go with them as they are only 3 blocks away from me, have offered me a good price and will allow me to take one home and try it out for a few days before I commit.

With a 24 foot room length and two rows of seats, I'm going to guess that your primary seat is in the first row and about 16 feet or so from the front wall? Your 120 inch screen size would be perfect for that distance. I'm guessing that's not an accident

Yes, my front center seat is primary and the measurement from that seat to the front of my screen is 15'" currently. Funny you said 16" as that is what it was going to be, but I moved my screen 6" forward to allow for a 60" LED TV to mount of the wall directly behind where my screen will come down. I don't want the kids rocking the projector 24/7. I did a lot of reading on projector/screen placement and while the 120" is the extreme max the room will support, I think it will work out ok. I know you typically want the bottom of the screen to be no less than 36" from the floor, although mine will be about 34". I think the distance at which I am seating will allow it to work out fine.

Your front speakers are going to be a little over 4 meters away I would guess. While the rule is to subtract 6dB of output for every doubling of distance, that refers more or less to an anechoic, or at the very least, an open field with only the ground reflecting sound. In an actual room, even with absorptive room treatments on the walls, you lose more like 3 or 4dB with every doubling of distance. Let's be on the safe side and say 4dB.

So we have to look at what sort of output and amplifier power you'll need. If we take something like a 90dB at 1Watt/1meter efficient speaker, it'll be producing around 82dB with 1 Watt of power at your primary seat. At the very least, 78dB with 1 Watt. That's not bad at all. You'd only need 2-6 Watts of continuous power to reach the 85dB average for reference level playback and only 200-800 Watts of peak power for the 105dB reference peaks in the speakers. But that's a fairly efficient 90dB/1Watt/1meter speaker. Plenty of speakers are 86dB/1Watt/1meter or lower. Now you'd need a little more than double all of those figures to hit reference.

Let's say you get the $700-ish GiK room kit plus a couple of diffusion panels from them too. You're looking at somewhere around $1200 for that once you include shipping.

Let's get you a pair of highly capable, deep output subs. Some good candidates would be the SVSound PB or PC12-NSD, the HSU VTF-3 MK4 or the Outlaw Audio LFM-1 EX. Once you factor in shipping, they're actually all about the same price at around $750 each - so around $1500 on the subs.

Looking into these options today, while I would like to go with the Rythmik, I am not closed minded.

Denon's 3312 should have ample power provided you go for fairly efficient speakers. What're we lookin' at there? About $850?

Yes close, I can get the Denon 3312 new for $719.00

So we've spent, what? Around $3500 already? Doesn't leave a heck of a lot for speakers out of $5500 does it?

Still, you'd have no trouble affording something like the Emotiva ERD-1 surrounds on clearance for $250 with a really nice front soundstage like the Ascend Acoustics CMT-340 SE mains and CMT-340 SE center at $794 shipped right now. Could get the dedicated stands for the CMT-340 SE mains as well, which make them look like towers I'm a big, big fan of Ascend's CMT-340 speakers. That SEAS tweeter they use is WAY above its price point in terms of sound quality. Highly efficient and high output - they'd have no trouble in your room with just the Denon powering them.

Should leave just enough for a decent disc player and remote! Not enough to get a good UPS Battery Backup power protection from APC though. If you want power protection, go APC. No question. The J35B is the best deal, although it's only got 8 outlets and only 6 of those are battery backed up. The J15BLK is the one I really like most. 12 battery protected outlets. And if you wanna go all fancy like, the S15BLK is sweet. Around $500 for the J15BLK if you search online. Totally worth it, IMO. Especially for a projector (to protect the lamp during a power failure) and for any DVR (let's you keep recording during a black out!) or anything with a hard drive or cooling fan (keep 'em spinning!).

Hope that helps!

Thank you very much for a very informative post which gives me quite a bit to think about and explore as many options as I can. It looks like we will start receiving furniture shipments tomorrow through all next week before we are ready to move back to the house, but I am not going to rush this by any means. I am not in such a hurry to get the HT setup that I am going to make an impulse purchase on anything.

As much as I would love to have my HT set up for the Superbowl, I am not going to let that drive my purchase and regret it later.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Yes close, I can get the Denon 3312 new for $719.00

Now - that's what I call a great deal !

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Epson 6010, which comes with an extra bulb, quality mount, 2 pair 3D glasses, extra year of warranty and next day exchange warranty for less than $2,500.

The screen I am considering is the Visual Apex 120" which reviews well and seems to be a great screen for $899.00(Tab-tension, motorized with wireless trigger etc) I am open to suggestions on screens which would not go past $1000.

If 3D is a must-have, then that is a great price. If the motorized projector screen is a must-have, then that is also a great price.

Otherwise, Amazon was selling the BenQ W6000 (which retails for $3500) for only $1350 last week.

 

[Savage40]

If 3D is a must-have, then that is a great price. If the motorized projector screen is a must-have, then that is also a great price.

Otherwise, Amazon was selling the BenQ W6000 (which retails for $3500) for only $1350 last week.

That is a great deal on the BenQ projector. I suppose if I went with that projector and a manual pull down screen, I would have another $1500 or so for speakers. However, my kids are really looking forward to a 3D projector. I can always go 5.1 for now and upgrade to 7.1 with amps later.

 

[zieglj01]

As much as I would love to have my HT set up for the Superbowl, I am not going to let that drive my purchase and regret it later.

At least get a pair of bookshelf speakers, from the company that attracks
you the most - and audition their sound and quality, during their 30 day
trial period - at least you will have something during the SuperBowl.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

That is a great deal on the BenQ projector. I suppose if I went with that projector and a manual pull down screen, I would have another $1500 or so for speakers. However, my kids are really looking forward to a 3D projector. I can always go 5.1 for now and upgrade to 7.1 with amps later.

I know what you mean. In that case, The Epson 3D projector is a great PJ.

InTheIndustry said he was very impressed was that projector.

 

[FirstReflection]

You're welcome!

I didn't realize you were so close to Rythmik and get to bypass the shipping with them. I'm a big fan of Rythmik's subs as well, although I tend to prefer their ported subs when movies and TV are a primary source - at least outside of a small room setting. There's quite a large price jump going from their FV12 to the FV15 and FV15HP though. In between are a lot of good subs! So given the budget, that's where I was coming from. A pair of FV12 won't match the output of a lone FV15HP - although they'd be closer in output if you stack them, but that's not really the idea here. We'd be going for good placement to get more even frequency response across your multiple seats.

I have to say, in your case, I really do think multiple subs are in order. You've got six lovely seats, it'd be nice if more than just the primary seat gets to enjoy linear, accurate frequency response in the bass. I'd certainly support the purchase of a pair of FV15HP or even a pair of FV15 despite the mentions of its above-20Hz output not being much higher then the FV12. But even with no shipping, either of those options costs more than a pair of SVS PB/PC12-NSD or the HSU VTF-3 MK4 or Outlaw LFM-1 EX. All of those fall in between the FV12 and FV15HP in terms of output and strong below-20Hz extension, which is pretty much exactly what your room size calls for. Believe me, I fully endorse a Rythmik purchase! But with the budget being a real concern, these other options still make a lot of sense

On the projector and screen front:

The best thing about the Epson 6010/5010 is its light output. It's a very bright projector - in fully calibrated mode, "light cannon" mode for daytime or ambient light viewing, and in 3D mode! The only negative I have to say about it is that its 3D isn't the greatest. The reason being that the dynamic iris does not function in 3D mode, so you lose the ultra deep blacks and the super high onff contrast. The 3D glasses somewhat make up for this by cutting over 50% of the light level, but I still regard the Epson 6010 as a fantastic 2D projector that can also do 3D in a pinch. If you want to watch a lot of 3D, the Panasonic AE7000u is the best, IMO. Does cost more though. And while the Panny 7000 is fully capable of being a "light cannon", in fully calibrated mode, it's not as bright. That said, you only have to come very slightly out of perfect calibration to get way more light output. And it's so slight that your eye won't ever notice, only your spectrophotometer can tell it's not perfectly calibrated anymore

You're getting such a good deal on the Epson though, I don't really see how slightly better looking 3D would be worth it. Just something to be aware of though. The Epson does lose some of its mojo in 3D mode.

For the screen, I'm not familiar with Visual Apex' screens performance yet, but it's certainly a good price for a tab tensioned electric screen! The only alternative I can think of would be a screen from Elite Screens. Elite has some great acoustically transparent screen materials that you can get in tab tensioned electric frames, but I'm pretty sure they cost more. Nice option though, since it lets you put your speakers behind where the screen comes down

As for setting the height of the screen, the rule I go by has nothing to do with how far the bottom of the screen is off the ground. I go by the THX and SMPTE recommendation that the top edge of your screen be no higher than 15 degrees above your eye line. That way, you are never craning your head upwards to see the middle of the screen.

From 15 feet away and a 120" screen, this recommendation would put the top edge of the screen about 48" above your eye line, leaving about 10.5" of screen surface below your eye line. With the average seated eye line being about 36" off the ground, that leaves you with the bottom edge of the viewable screen area being about 25.5" off the ground. Then you have the screen's bottom border to consider, so probably about 22-23" from the ground to the physical bottom of the screen. That puts your center speaker kind of low, which is why an acoustically transparent screen can be such a nice option. Not a big problem though. You have enough distance that you can easily just angle your center upwards and still get good sound

 

[lsiberian]

Epson projectors are solid and I'd buy one again.

For screens make sure it's tab-tensioned if it's a pull down or motorized otherwise the screen will wave and that's not good.

I always suggest building a home theater in pieces, but on that budget I'd expect a projector screen combo to be in 3000 - 3500 range.

If you cheap out on anything make it the projector not the screen.

That leaves around 2k for audio. On that level I'd suggest an Infinity Primus setup with a powerful sub and reasonably price receiver.

If you want to go cheap on the projector the one I use is only around 1k and a fixed frame would be in that range too.

 

[gotchaforce]

Id personally just use a wilsonart fashion grey screen on a frame and call it a day but thats just me... although i dont need a pull down

BTW, First reflection makes a lot of good points, but it should be noted that you can eliminate a lot of reflections right off the bat by using wave guides.