Home Theater Geeks 489 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I profile another home theater built by Patrick Williams, who I profiled a few episodes ago with his Force Theater Star Wars theme. Not so this time. Stay tuned.

00:18 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT.

00:34 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson here, the Home Theater Geek. In episode 481, I profiled a home theater built by Patrick Williams that was in honor of May the 4th, star Wars Day, and his theater was definitely Star Wars themed. It was called the Force. Well, patrick has since moved and built a new house in Springfield, missouri, and built a new home theater. Has nothing to do with Star Wars, but he wanted everything about it to outperform what he had done before. Well, that's a tall order, because what he had built in the force was quite good, but I have to say this one's even better. I profiled it on AVS Forum and we'll put the link in the show notes to that article so you can see even more detail than what I'm going to present here. But I wanted to share it with you because it's really, really good. As I said, his primary goal was to make it bigger and better. For one thing, he had seven seats in the force and he wanted at least 10 in this one, so the room had to be bigger. And he also needed it to be so that no seat was too close to a wall or the back or super close to a speaker. So the room had to be even bigger, so the room had to be even bigger. So, of course, since this was also a custom build, along with the house, which was built from the ground up, he had to start with a plan, and the plan came from Quest Acoustical Interiors, a company that developed the layout, and here we see it, a very detailed drawing. The planning and design happened just prior, he says, to the release of Cedia's recommended practice for immersive audio systems, which is called RP22. But the draft was out and they based the theater on those principles. The people at the company were Sean Byrne and Sharon Fayer and they designed the theater and Gary LeMay, president of Quest AI, performed the pre-built acoustical analysis. So this is no holds barred, folks, this is the real deal.

03:08
Okay, so once he had the plan, it was time to start building, and here's the concrete shell. You know it's so great when you can start with exactly the right dimensions and build the room really from scratch. I mean here it is from scratch. Next step, of course, was framing, and we see a picture of the framing and the space is really, really big. So this is not going to be a small theater by any means. In the next picture you can see the framing, with some of the siding up, and he wrote in where most of the speakers would be and he wanted to put in more speaker channels than he had in the Force for greater immersion and the ability to really recreate the theatrical. And in the ability to really recreate the theatrical immersive spatial experience, although his really was going to be clearer and more detailed than most commercial cinemas.

04:16
He said I also wanted to give a bit more violence in the low end without distorting, and the way to accomplish that was to use a Trinov Altitude 16 surround processor with QSC power amps. These are professional power amps for the main channels and JTR amps for the subs, jtr being the company that actually built the subs. He also noted that with such a much larger room he was going to need a larger screen and that was going to require a projector capable of lighting it up. But he didn't want the blacks to suffer, so of course he went with a JVC projector, in his case the DLA-NZ9, which is their top-of-the-line projector, and it's a light cannon but still preserves blacks beautifully. Jvc is the champion of blacks in projectors. The screen is a StudioTek 130 G4, which has a gain of 1.3, so almost close to Unity, 15 feet wide with 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio, so full cinema aspect ratio, and giant and giant. And he also uses a video processor called the MADVR-NV Extreme, which is a wonderful video processor and a panamorphic lens to stretch the image to 16 by 9.

06:01
Okay, in the next graphic we can see something that is done in most high-end home theaters, which is called hat channels. So these metal bars that are across the framing are used to hang the drywall, which have clips on the drywall so that it's isolated from the framing and from the rest of the house. The sound isolation was really important to him, as was a dedicated heating, ventilation and air conditioning system HVAC. In fact, the room was engineered as a room within a room to maximize sound isolation and soundproofing, and the theater had a dedicated HVAC system that controlled the temperature and contained the sound without leaking into the rest of the house. In the next image we can see the riser taking shape, and it's a very large riser. It's going to fit five people, five seats in it that are not close to any walls or speakers.

07:11
And the next picture we see he covered all the walls with fabric and these pieces right here, these wooden pieces on top of the drywall are for that purpose. They're going to hang the fabric on these pieces of wood channels whatever you want to call them and in the next picture we can see the acoustic treatments that are going to be behind that fabric. They're all provided by Quest AI and there are some diffusers and some absorbers and some hybrid-type things. Again, the acoustical analysis was very carefully done. To optimize the sound of the room they used double 5-8-inch drywall with green glue between the ceiling joists and all the walls. They use the IB1 clips and hat channels for the walls and ceiling, r19 insulation in all cavities, a floating floor and a mixture of sand and sawdust in the stage and flex ducting for the HVAC for the supplies and returns in the stage and flex ducting for the HVAC for the supplies and returns in the theater and projector room.

08:34
In the next graphic we can see that the screen wall and the ceiling are acoustically treated as well. There's no stone left unturned here. In the next graphic we can see the fabric in the walls, which he said was the most difficult thing in the entire build and you can see it's kind of beveled on the edges on the sides, the edges of each panel, which gives it a real 3D look, beautiful, in fact, but not easy to install at all. So in the next graphic we can see the front screen wall with the two JTR Captivator subwoofers, in addition to the Ascendo LCR speakers. This model of Ascendo is called the 12. Ascendo, the six on-wall and wedge speakers, were used for the surrounds and overhead speakers. So he went Ascendo all the way around with the JTR subwoofers. Again, that's a speaker company you might not have heard of, but very, very high end. Interestingly, he put two more subs in the back of the room, but he tried to find a place to put them, and he found a place behind the rear seats. In the next graphic we can see that they're actually in the floor covered by metal grates to protect the drivers, and so he has two in the front and two in the back, which is an excellent way to to manage your low frequency base, and especially with that Trinov processor, you can do some really, really nice things. The the equipment rack in the next picture is also very impressive. We have three views of it Lots of techno spaghetti, and that Taurus on the right is the power supply, basically from a company called Taurus Power. It's a balanced power system.

10:51
Now the room has some unusual elements, as most theaters do. The theater is two feet lower than the rest of the basement to achieve the desired ceiling height. The plan had originally called for it being three feet lower, but then they hit a lot of limestone that required something called a rock breaker and, as he said, you got to compromise somewhere. I'm sure that would have been really expensive and a lot, a lot of work to go a foot into the bedrock, so he didn't do that. So finally, we look at the room itself as it's finished, and what a gorgeous room I mean wow, it's so beautiful.

11:40
He didn't want to do another themed theater like the Death Star. He said he wanted something that mimicked an IMAX feel and the goal was to conceal the speakers behind Fabric, which he did, and having the projector room to house all the components, so that was separate from the theater. He wanted to eliminate any distractions that pulled you out of the experience and they made sure to use darker colors near the screen to improve the contrast, which the jvc already does a great job at, but they wanted to make it as good as it could be. He said the colors we ended up with are a callback to the original nes console black and charcoal gray with red accents. Also notice these led strip lights, which are not floor to ceiling but just different heights and different lengths. It's a beautiful effect.

12:41
In the next graphic we can see that he got his wish for 10 seats and they're really, really nice, with stairs leading to the riser. I mean, the whole thing is just so beautiful With stairs leading to the riser. I mean the whole thing is just so beautiful. The next one we see again another picture of the seats, and the front row seats are from a company called SeatCraft. They're the Diamante FX recliners with retracting headrests. This is pretty interesting. So, if you want, headrests often block the sound that's coming from behind you from getting to your ears properly, so you can retract them in that case and not worry about that. The rear row, the second row, is five HT design Waveland recliners. They don't have the reclining headrests, but the money seat, if you will, is in the front row, so that's fine.

13:43
Uh, patrick did a lot of work, a lot of the work himself. Um, he built and installed the speaker boxes. Um, he cut and installed the acoustic treatment material. He did an awful lot of it himself and that saved him some money, although this was still not a cheap build. In fact he said the MSRP of all the gear was around $250,000, but he was able to get it for around $155,000. He shopped for deals, bought used equipment where he could. Still that's a lot of money. Construction and labor were an additional $40,000 to $45,000. And that's even with him doing a lot of the work himself.

14:35
He called it the end game theater and he said it's not a Marvel reference, it's not a reference to Avengers end game movie, but rather a play on words, for two reasons he says First, the gear is end game, at least for us. I'm sure he doesn't want to buy any more gear, although anybody who's a home theater geek knows there is no cure for upgrade itis Uh. Second, he's a gamer and he the design reminds him of something from a video game, uh. So that's that's why he ended up calling it the end game. So one last picture of the final room to show you here. It's really a beauty. Here's the view from the seats and I would love to watch a movie in there.

15:35
It's hard to imagine that Patrick could have improved on the Forest Theater, but he really did. He really really did, and he's sure to enjoy it for many years to come. It truly is an end game. I have a feeling If he buys another house and builds another theater, where can he go from here? Who knows, but for the moment I'm sure he is happily ensconced. Well done, patrick. Now if you have a question for me, you can send it right along to htg at twittv. I love answering questions here on the show and I will do so as often as I can. And, as you know, all of Twitch shows are on YouTube now for free, but with ads. If you want to go ad-free, join the club, go to twittv. Slash clubtwit to join up today. Until next time, geek out.