Home Theater Geeks 476 Transcript

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00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I feature a home theater inspired by Middle Eastern decor. It's a beauty, 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'm going to profile a home theater that I featured in AVS Forum's Home Theater of the Month column theater of the month column. Now, normally I prefer theaters that are simple and dark neutral colors, but this one's special and I really, really dig it. The owner, whose name is Jeremy Shields, calls it the Aladdin, and this article goes all the way back to 2018. We'll include the link in the show notes so you can check out that article, but I wanted to show it to you here because it's really cool.

01:19
Jeremy and his wife bought their home in Portland Oregon in 2014. Bought their home in Portland Oregon in 2014, and he made sure he had a basement that could accommodate a home theater dedicated home theater. So, as Jeremy said, I wanted a dedicated space with top-notch sound and picture. Also, I wanted to be able to listen at near reference levels that's, really loud without disturbing the rest of the house. Finally, I wanted a space that felt comfortable, warm and inviting for my family and guests regarding the decor. He said I've always loved asian and middle eastern influences. I wanted a space that, once you closed the door, you felt like you'd been transported to a magical world full of imagination and possibilities. The result is the Aladdin a stunning room full of Middle Eastern influences. As you can see here, it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful Now in the build.

02:28
We take a look at the next graphic and we can see that the exterior walls were covered with something called dry core smart wall to keep the moisture out of the basement because this is Portland, after all and he used metal studs throughout to frame the theater. You can see in this picture, near the center top, one of the speaker boxes that would house one of the overhead speakers. Now the next picture shows you the two speaker boxes that are going to house the two of the surround speakers. All of the in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, as well as all recessed lights, are mounted in custom-made boxes isolated with rubber washers, so he was serious about sound isolation here. In the next graphic, we can see the interior walls and the ceiling had a special kind of drywall called Quiet Rock Sound Damping Drywall, and it's hanging from clips that are attached to those metal studs we saw before with rubber isolation grommets. So once again, another tap to sound isolation. In this photo you can also see the projector niche above the large alcove at the back of the room. In the next picture we can see the screen wall which is being framed in there, which is where the screen's going to go. It's framed with two by fours with enough space behind it to accommodate three Martin Logan speakers and two do-it-yourself subwoofers, which we'll see the subwoofer here in a minute. In the next picture we can see the walls and ceiling are being painted an indigo blue it looks kind of black in this picture, but it's actually indigo blue over which the acoustic panels and final decor will be placed.

04:42
Jeremy had thought about installing a floating floor Talk about serious sound isolation but the room height is pretty limited, it being a basement, so he opted for an engineered cork floor for its minimal profile, comfort, easy cleanup, very important and sound absorbing properties. Cork is pretty sound-absorbing, so that's what he ended up doing. In the next picture we can see one of the two do-it-yourself subwoofers which Jeremy installed behind the acoustically transparent screen. Each sub includes a Dayton Audio RSS460HO 18-inch driver which is really big in a 10 cubic foot ported box which is tuned specifically down to 20 hertz, which is the bottom of the human hearing range. Some real bass addicts would go even lower than that, but I'm fine with 20 hertz myself. So we saw a picture of the finished product at the beginning of this episode, and we can see one here as well. We'll see several that are very cool.

05:54
Instead of theater seats, he decided to use this leather couch, uh, with a beautiful ottoman, and this fireplace on the side is really, really cool. I think the next picture is a is a close-up. Oh no, there's a shot from behind the couch. We can see the screen with a picture on it. It's an acoustically transparent screen that lets the sound come through the screen, which most home theaters have since quite some time ago. I wanted to mention that on the far wall there you can see the acoustic panels that Jeremy built. Each one consists of what's called Roxul mineral wool, and it's wrapped in vintage wedding saris, which are long pieces of fabric that wrap around the body to form a dress. It's very common in India. The frames are made from picture frames, and I think he did a fantastic job there.

06:57
Now we go to the next picture we can see the fireplace, and I'll mention that a local company in Portland made the Moroccan tiles around the fireplace and Jeremy laid them himself. He did an awful lot of this work by fireplace and Jeremy laid them himself. He did an awful lot of this work by himself, which is a wonderful thing. I love it when home theaters are mostly DIY. In the next picture, we can see this what's called a Chesterfield couch, made by a company called Roger and Chris. It had to be constructed in two pieces to fit down the stairs to the basement. Also, there are three doors into this room which are visible in this shot, but they're difficult to see when closed. All three are 1.5-inch solid core exterior doors with full gasketing around them, so there ain't no sound getting out of this, nor any coming in from the outside. It's beautifully isolated. The next graphic we can see the screen a little better. It's acoustically transparent. As I said before, the material is called Center Stage XD from a company called Seymour AV. It measures 125 inches wide with a 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio, which is what you want if you're watching mostly movies. Now, since this was in 2018, the JVC DLA RS45 projector was not 4K. I imagine Jeremy has upgraded it since then to something 4K probably a JVC as well, which in my opinion, is the best home theater projector you can buy.

08:50
I mentioned the front, left and right and center speakers a little while ago. They're martin logan arias ones. The right and left ones are, and the center is a martin logan quest. The surrounds are monoprice amber in walls and the overheads are monoprice caliber in ceilings. The whole system is 7.2.4, so seven speakers around. So seven speakers around the listening area, two subwoofers and four overhead in the ceiling. The surround processor is a Marantz AV7702 Mark II. At least it was when this article was written. I imagine that he probably has upgraded the processor since then.

09:36
The main speakers probably didn't upgrade the amps. You don't really need to. Amps are amps. If they work well, then they're going to keep working well. The speakers are powered by amps from Parasound, rotel and Adcom and the subwoofers are powered by specialty amps from Behringer. They're called iNuke and they power the subwoofers with a lot of power.

10:10
Now here's something interesting. 2018 was a DIY home theater PC, a computer dedicated to um, to running to showing content, um, running windows 10. The CPU was an I three. He had 16 gigabytes of Ram, four terabytes hard drive for movies, a 256 gigabyte solid state drive for music and photos and a separate 120 gigabyte SSD for Windows 10. Now those specs sound pretty wimpy today, and I'm sure he's upgraded it significantly since then probably a whole new computer but I just thought that was pretty, pretty funny.

11:05
2018 is now what seven years ago, which in computer years, is many lifetimes Many lifetimes Now. Jeremy figures he spent about $80,000 altogether, which includes about $55,000 on the contractor who built the shell, relocated the HVAC, heating, ventilation and air conditioning system and built a new laundry area outside the theater which has nothing to do with the theater. That leaves about $25,000 for everything else. He said it's hard to put a number on this, since there were a million trips to Home Depot for small items. Yeah, I know that story all too well myself, but you know, $25,000 to fill a home theater like that is not bad, even seven years ago. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed seeing it. It's a really fun, a really cool home theater that I really enjoyed and I hope you did too.

12:15
So if you have a question for me as always, love to hear from you Give me a shout, send me an email to htg at twittv and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. Now, as you know, all the episodes of Home Theater Geeks are now available on YouTube for free, with commercials. If you want to go ad free, as you know, all the episodes of Home Theater Geeks are now available on YouTube for free, with commercials. If you want to go ad-free, join the club. All you have to do is go to twittv slash club twit, to sign up and you'll get all the twit programming absolutely ad-free. So until next time, geek out.