Home Theater Geeks 485 Transcript

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00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks I talk about a home theater fit for hobbits, 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 feature a home theater that I profiled on AVS Forum all the way back in 2013. It's a charming tiny little home theater that I thought was really cool for what he did with very limited space. We'll put the link to the article in the show notes so you can check that out.

00:57
The owner is named David Chu and he has a very small room to work with roughly 10 feet by 10 feet in his duplex in Vancouver, british Columbia, and it's a great example of what you can do in a very small space. He started by figuring out the maximum screen size and projector throw distance that he could accommodate in that room and based everything else on that. So we'll start with the floor plan. As you can see, it's a very oddly shaped area. I mean it's mostly square, but it's got that diagonal sort of entryway open to the office area. The throw distance is only nine feet eight inches. The original plan was to put the screen on the short wall opposite that angled opening but David decided it just felt right to flip the orientation by 90 degrees and I have to agree with him. The next graphic we can see the back of the basement room where the theater is. It has a recessed window which will be completely covered up and provide a bit more throw distance for the projector. The projector can sort of get stuffed into that little window alcove thing. So in the next one we can see this blue tape marks the boundaries of a 16 by 9 and a 2.35 to 1 screen. The wider screen won because I guess he watches mostly movies. If you watch mostly TV shows then 16 by 9 would be fine, but if you watch mostly movies you really want a 2.35 to 1 screen.

02:45
The screen that he installed is from a company called Elite. It's the Lunette Cinewide. It's 106 inches wide, 2.35 to 1. It's a slightly curved screen which we'll see in a photo here in a minute. And that curvature in a screen that big is a good thing, especially at a close seating distance like he has, because it helps reduce what's called pin cushioning. When the projector projects a big, wide image on a flat screen, the edges can be somewhat distorted and having a slightly curved screen helps that, okay. So next graphic, we will see the subwoofer niche which was built custom to fit an SVS SB12 NSD 12-inch powered subwoofer. Also in this photo you can see the partial frame of the small curved stage at the bottom, which is a feature that most home theater owners like to put in their home theater.

04:00
Next graphic, we can see the tray ceiling. Next graphic, we can see the tray ceiling, which will have rope lights around the boundary of this tray ceiling, which you'll see the effect of in a couple of graphics from now. And in the next one we can see what are called the surround pilasters, which are these corner units. They're mostly filled with rock wool, forming what are called super chunk bass traps. The surround speaker is going to be in the upper portion of that column, that's triangular column called a pilaster.

04:45
Now, within this room, acoustic treatment was of particular importance, especially bass buildup in the listening position at the back of the room, because the couch had to be very near the back wall and that's going to build up some serious base energy. So, in addition to the base traps in the surround pilasters, there's he also installed fiberglass base traps in the rear soffit in the area of the tray above the tray ceiling, which reaches back more than two and a half feet, so you can trap some really low bass frequencies in that much space space and the space beneath the screen as well, where there's not a subwoofer or the equipment rack. He also put in this fiberglass and he treated the walls with something called Roxul Comfort Board IS installation which has very similar absorption characteristics as Owens Corning 701 material used commonly in recording studios. And here we see the walls lined with that Roxul comfort board IS. Now David doesn't listen at reference levels, he said to me, but he does want to be concerned about acoustic isolation to a certain degree, because that wall that we're seeing right here in this photograph is shared with the other half of the duplex he lives in. So he wanted to be a considerate neighbor and I applaud him for that. So he put in some serious sound isolation material there so that you know he didn't start a neighborhood war, although he did say that that wall is already decoupled with two stud walls, insulation and 5-8 sheetrock and he installed another layer of 5-8 inch sheetrock with this material the sound in the room and prevent it from getting transmitted over into the other half of the duplex.

07:26
So if we look at the next graphic, we can see that there is very little space, especially behind the screen. Normally when you have a projection screen like that, you would put the speakers behind the screen. Normally, when you have a projection screen like that, you would put the speakers behind the screen, but there wasn't really room to do that and there's a closet behind that screen wall as well that he didn't want to get rid of. So he couldn't put speakers behind an acoustically transparent screen. So he did commandeer some of the closet space for the equipment rack in the corner of the room and a subwoofer niche below the screen and he put the main front center left and right speakers above the screen. They're Paradigm Mini Monitor LCR speakers and, as you can see here, they're mounted above the screen, pointing down toward the seating position. It's not ideal but given the constraints of the room, it was probably the best solution. Certainly, I agree with keeping the speakers all in a line rather than having, say, the left and right speakers above the speaker above the screen and the center below the screen. That would not have been good.

08:41
In the next one we can see, uh, the uh sofa, which was brought from a previous theater works perfectly well here. Um, and in the next picture we can see the niche created by the now sealed window, which gives the projector a bit more throw distance. You can see also the anamorphic lens sitting in front of the projector. It's in a fixed position, it doesn't move in and out of the way, and the projector processes the video according to the image's intended aspect ratio. David discovered this anamorphic lens from a company called Panamorph. It's the Cinevista and it costs about a thousand bucks, which is not too bad for an anamorphic lens. High quality glass is always going to be expensive. Always camera lenses, any kind of high quality glass, is always going to be expensive. Always Camera lenses, any kind of high quality glass is always going to be expensive. So with this panamorphic lens the projector can do something called constant image height, or CIH, which changes the width of the image from 4 to 4 by 3 for older style TV shows, 16 by 9 for HDTV and 2.35 to 1 for movies. All have the same height, which is a very common and worthwhile way to do images of different aspect ratios. In the next graphic you can see the little curvature in the screen, which again helps with this issue of pin cushioning, which is when the projector's image is either too. I think it's too high for the screen at the edges of the screen and the curvature helps solve that problem.

10:46
Um, and the next graphic you can see the equipment rack, so to speak. It's pretty small, it doesn't have a lot. Um, it's behind a fabric covered door next to the subwoofer, and the connections are managed in the closet behind the wall, which that's a pretty cool idea. I like that. He says he's especially proud of the hidden equipment rack. He says quote I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to make the equipment rack door completely hidden, but he worked, it works, he did a beautiful job there. It works, he did a beautiful job there. So in the last picture, uh, we can see the, uh see the theater with some kids, uh, enjoying a movie. Uh, you know, there you can see in the corner the, the pilaster with the surround speaker and the acoustic treatments. All the walls are fabric covered. It's a really beautiful theater in such a tiny space. It's really good. I like it quite a lot.

11:46
He says the active planning phase took about three months and construction took about another four months at a total cost of only $12,000, which is really really good. Now, granted, this is 2013. And he said that was equally divided between the equipment and the building materials. He already owned some furniture from his previous theater, so you know he brought that along, and some equipment as well, and some equipment as well. So you know he was able to save money on all of that and he did all the work himself.

12:27
I love these DIY projects. I mean. Sure, if you have the money to hire a professional installer, great, I'd say, go for it. But if you want to save money and you're handy, doing it yourself can really save a lot of money and be very satisfying at the same time. Now, in 2013, the system was only 5.1.

12:49
No Atmos, no rear surrounds. He couldn't have rear surrounds in that setup anyway, because the couch is almost virtually up against the back wall. Because the couch is almost virtually up against the back wall, as I said, they were Paradigm mini monitors for the front, lcrs and Paradigm Atom monitors for the left and right surrounds and, as I mentioned, the SVS SB12 12-inch subwoofer. At the time, he was using an Onkyo receiver, txnr818, which was very good for the time, and the projector was the Epson Home Cinema 8350, which was 1080p. Okay, this was 2013,. Remember Sources, he had the Sony PS4 for playing games and Blu-ray discs and an Apple TV 3. So we've come a long way since then.

13:48
Equipment changes very quickly and in the last 12 years it's changed a lot and I'm sure David must have upgraded the equipment by now. But the fundamentals of the room didn't change and I think he treated those extremely well. So now, hopefully, he has Atmos, he's got some speakers overhead, he's got a 4K projector, but the room is the room and the room is great. So I applaud David Chu for doing such a great job with so little space. So on this show we often answer listener questions. If you have one for me, send it along to htg at twittv and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. Now all of the episodes of Home Theater Geeks are now available on YouTube to view for free, with ads. If you want to go ad free, join the club. Just go to twittv, slash club twit and join up. You'll be able to see all the Twitch shows with no commercials. So I hope you will do that Until next time geek out.