Home Theater Geeks 460 Transcript

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00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I profile another great home theater of the month from AVS Forum. So stay tuned. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the Home Theater Geek. In this episode, I profile another great home theater of the month from AVS Forum. This one's from August 2024, so only a few months ago. We have a link to the actual article on AVS Forum in our show notes, but I wanted to share it with you because it's pretty cool.

00:53
The owner is named Alex and he's only 31 years old, which is quite a bit younger than your average AVS Forum member, but he fully understands the value of a dedicated home theater. His young family bought a house in Las Cruces, new Mexico, in 2023. Now the house had a theater room, what they called a theater room. It was basically just a tall empty room with a shelf in the back for the projector, no screen and some low-end in-wall surround speakers, but it inspired him to build a real home theater in this room. In fact, when he saw it, he said, okay, let's buy this house and you can see here the sectional, two-seat, two-loveeat combined sectional, the shelf with a projector on it, um, and then in the other corner you can see this big, tall room uh, it's, it's really really tall, 14 foot ceilings, uh, which is much, much taller than uh, any home theater I've ever seen before. Anyway, so he did a lot of work in this room and I will tell you at the beginning and I'll also remind you later it's all DIY.

02:15
He did this all himself. For example, he built a false screen wall to support the screen, with enough room behind it to put the speakers behind the screen, which was going to be acoustically transparent. And that black material you see on the wall is four inch thick. Oh, I take it back, it's not four inches thick, but it is two layers of black acoustic duct liner to absorb the back wave of the speakers. Speakers radiate more or less spherically and so not only do they radiate forward but they radiate backwards as well, and you want to try to minimize that interfering by reflecting off the wall behind them, the front wall of the theater. So he put that acoustic duct lining in there to minimize or reduce that back wave reflection. It's also black because an acoustically transparent screen has little tiny holes in it, which lets the sound come through from the speakers and it also lets light come through. So when the projector shines onto the screen, most of the light gets reflected back into the room, but some of it gets through those tiny little holes and if the wall behind the screen isn't black, then that light gets reflected and some of that comes back through those tiny little holes and can distort the image. So Alex did a really good thing there.

03:56
He also did some really interesting things with the paint. He painted the ceiling a flat black, painted the ceiling a flat black and the walls he painted in what's called a lime wash dark blue, which looks quite a bit lighter in this photo and most of the photos he's taken than it actually is. It's actually quite dark and you can see a ceiling fan here that he's removed as well. But that wall you can see the lime wash kind of quality to it. It's got a real texture to it. It's really cool.

04:31
Now, one of the things Alex did and was very conscious about was acoustic treatments in the room and he built these 12 acoustic panels of various sizes with wooden frames. Now he claimed he wasn't very handy, didn't have a lot of building skills when he started this project, but he dove right in and he really learned a lot. Now the panels. This is what I was thinking of earlier. The panels are four-inch thick nowf acoustical board, that's k-n-a-u-f. Now acoustical board, which is four inches thick and and therefore going to absorb a fair amount of frequencies, and they later get get covered with a black fabric from the fabric store joanne. And so he went there and got that fabric and built these, uh, built these panels 12 of them all together. We'll see where they're placed here in a little bit.

05:36
In the next graphic we can see three of his front, left and right and center speakers are from Power Sound Audio. The model is MTM210M and they reproduce the front, left, center and right channels. Also behind the screen are two Monoprice Monolith M15V2 subwoofers which are 15-inch subwoofers and they are what provide the base and really really nice. Notice also at the bottom of this picture you can see the electronics. He doesn't have a lot. He's got a receiver in the middle. Uh, there's a probably a ultra hd blu-ray player there, a couple other things. He decided just to put those right there in the front under the speakers. Put those right there in the front under the speakers. Now the next graphic.

06:39
One thing he did was to build a niche or a niche, depending on how you want to say it behind the wall. Remember that in the first photograph there was a shelf on the wall. Well, he didn't want that. He wanted to put the projector on the wall. Well, he didn't want that, he wanted to put the projector behind the wall. So he built this niche which is fan cooled to keep the projector cool, and he installed cinema grade optically clear glass in front of the projector which lets the light through just fine and helps minimize the amount of noise the fan noise getting into the theater. And he built this beautiful frame around the opening along with the frames for the um acoustic panels.

07:28
Now, one of the cool things he did was he built an accurate replica of the HAL 9000 computer terminal from 2001,. A space odyssey, and I just think I mean, wow, it just looks just like it. It was great. Now, what he did also did was he embedded an Apple HomePod mini within this replica to accept voice commands. So, for example, he told me, whenever a movie is paused, the lights activate dynamically, emulating a dim fireplace, while the HomePod plays ambient fireplace sounds. Man, that's cool. And when you start playback again, the movie resumes while the lights and sounds fade to black. Oh man, that is just really really nice, very creative. Now he did the calibration of the audio, probably the video as well, but I have here a graphic that you can see the pre and post calibration curves for the room's base response, the purple is obviously the pre-calibration and you can see some peaks in around 40 and around 55 and around 80 and around 95. But after calibration that white curve is very, very flat, not perfect, but close enough that no one will notice. It's really good. He did an excellent job in that.

09:06
So let's take a look at a couple pictures of the final theater. Here we're standing in the entrance and you can see some of the acoustic panels on the back wall and on the sidewall as well, along with a projector niche and the HAL 9000. And it looks mighty nice. And we look at the next one and we can see oh, this one, he's quite the bass fanatic and so he added what are called tactile transducers under the seats. These are from a company called Croson and basically, when the bass low low frequency content of the soundtrack gets really intense, these things actually shake your seat and this is not my cup of tea. I would not install this in a home theater, but I know an awful lot of people who do, and if you really want to, it's more immersive. Who do, and if you really want to, it's more immersive. Certainly if you're watching an earthquake on a movie, or a spaceship blast off or something like that, your sheet's going to rumble. Some people love it, I don't, but more power to them if they do so. He has the front two seats with these Croson tactile transducers.

10:29
Now, if we take a look at the back of the room, we can see seven acoustic panels and the rear overhead speakers which are mounted really high up on the back wall. Now, unfortunately, he's still using the low end in wall surround speakers that came with the room and I really hope he replaces them soon. That will. That will help improve the situation, the sonic situation, greatly. But the overhead speakers those, those are quite nice. He's got four of them, two on the back wall and two on the front.

11:11
Now, one of the most special features of this room is the star ceiling that he put up. Most people use what are called fiber optic star ceilings. They have dozens, hundreds of fiber optic cables that end in little tiny holes in the ceiling and shine with light that are supposed to represent stars. This is not that. This one he painted with phosphorescent paint and so he has several upfiring ultraviolet lights that shine onto the ceiling and he turns on these lights for a while. That charges up the phosphorescent paint and then, when you turn them off, the phosphorescent paint glows for a while. It gradually fades, but the effect is wonderful. I have seen star ceilings like this and I really like them a lot, and he actually painted them with an accurate representation of the Milky Way and several constellations, which I thought was just great.

12:25
So finally, we take a look at the front of the theater and you can see he was wondering how am I going to take care or deal with this high ceiling? I want the screen to be down, where it's supposed to be, but that means I've got all this wall space leading up to the ceiling 14-foot high ceilings and so he covered them with this plush, you know, curtain material, which makes it look like a high-end commercial cinema. I think that's great. I really like the way it looks, and here you can also see the front overhead speakers and some of the other acoustic treatments that are at what are called the first reflection points. So when the speakers send out their sound spherically, it will bounce against the walls at some point and the the what are called the first reflections, based upon where the chairs are, the seats are, chairs are, the seats are are where those acoustic panels are, which allow them to reduce the amount that you hear of that reflection off the wall and you're hearing more of the direct sound.

13:39
Now, as I said, this is an entirely DIY theater. Do it yourself. Alex did everything except, he says, move a couple of electrical outlets, and he says he spent around $20,000, which is a fair chunk of change, no question, but it's one of the least expensive home theaters of the month I've ever featured. He says that if he had hired somebody to do this an installer it would have been more like $50,000. So he saved an awful lot of money by doing it himself and he has a great deal of pride justifiably so in what he has accomplished. He named it the Odyssey Theater in honor of Stanley Kubrick and in particular his iconic movie 2001, a Space Odyssey, which you can't blame him for, or you totally understand, because he put a replica of HAL 9000 right there on the wall. So I think it's super well done. It's a really nice theater and the fact that it's all DIY is just so much the better.

14:49
So thanks for coming along with me on this Odyssey through the Odyssey Theater. Hope you enjoyed it. Now, if you have a question for me, you can send it along to htg at twittv and I will answer as many as I can right here on the show. And I will answer as many as I can right here on the show. And we thank you, as always, for your support of the Twit Network with your membership in Club Twit, which gives you access to all the Twit shows in their video form and lets you come into the Discord forum and interact with folks who also love tech. So until next time, geek out.