1. Amplification, maybe I’m crazy but I’ve seen plenty of people running DJ amps to power their home theater. Worthwhile mentions include Crown and QSC amps. From what I see they are pretty cheap amps around 200-500x2 channels. Which would be more than enough to power the towers or anything else you throw at them. Only thing would be the heat, they do get kinda hot. Only other option would the the emotiva basx3 or 5 channel and outlaw 5000x.
My room is not large enough to justify that kind of power, IMO, so I just use the built-in amplification in my processor. Professional-grade installed amps like the QSC RMX2450 have built-in cooling; I've got a few of them installed at a venue that are well over 20 years old and still running strong.
2. Sound deadning, I see you guys are rocking carpet; would it make sense to buy a carpet to put on the floor between the tv and couch?? I’ve read that does help with acoustics.
Every room is different. Start by researching how to calculate your room's RT60 - the time it takes for the various frequencies in your room to decay by 60 dB. Generally speaking you want 1/2 second or less.
Once you have your room's RT60 as it sits, you will need to determine the amount of area required of varying materials to bring your RT60 down to the target. That could mean hanging curtains or acoustical panels, installing carpet, etc. I made an Excel spreadsheet that showed me the RT60 at a few frequencies in my room and then recalculated it with me plugging in the areas of acoustical panels of varying materials to help me decide which type and how much I needed.
If you use my sheet as an example, you can easily swap out the square footage of your floor for different materials using their established absorptive coefficients.
2b. Are you guys running any acoustic panels on the walls?? I see them on FB marketplace all the time, do they really help as advertised or snake oil?
Yes. As you can see in my RT60 calculations, even with a floor full of heavy 8 lb. padding and pile carpet, my reverb decay time was close to 2/3 of a second. I opted to install 96 square feet of custom-built acoustical panels using Rockboard 60, due to its better absorption in the low-mid range compared to Rockboard 80. This brought my room's RT60 down to an acceptable range of about .43 seconds without any furniture. With the seats in there, it's lower still (I haven't bothered to measure/calculate it, but I'd guess it's around .35).
Aside from the benefit of reducing reverb decay time, the biggest difference is (with proper positioning) that they help a lot with sound directionality. Before I hung mine, sounds from any given speaker channel (e.g. left) generally sounded like they were coming from the left, but it wasn't very precise. Not to say it was bad directionality, but I didn't know what I was missing out on at first. After they went up, the precision and directionality of positional audio went WAY up - meaning it was much easier to spatially orient the location of sounds on the soundstage because of the reduced reflections from the speaker on its way to the listener's ear. This was way more noticeable to me than the reduction in RT60.
Side note, I’m uber jelly of yours guys theaters rooms, that’s a total dream of mine. Besides having a 700whp thunderbird
having a room like that would be next level.
Thank you.
As you can see by this thread, it's been an interesting and satisfying journey.
Also not to be nosy, but what do you guys do for a living to afford that stuff? I’m currently a delivery driver for a custom lamp company, but planning on hopefully getting my smog check certificate and opening a business in the future.
My wife is an established veterinarian at the area's only 24-hr emergency animal hospital, and I work for an IT managed services firm that specializes in K12 education tech and cybersecurity. I am the manager of the division of network engineers, system admins and software developers. IMO it's as much about properly managing and budgeting as it is about having in the first place. All the stuff for my theater was planned for, saved for, then eventually purchased when the time was right. I must have been waiting to spring for the projector for 6 months before I actually bought it.
I could use your electronic expertise!
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I know it’s sealed but with 4 6.5’s who cares haha. My current RP504c sounds pretty cool no lie but I’m betting that one is in a class of its own. Maybe on day in the future I’d like to grab a set of RF7 towers, dual 10’s power tower must sound rediculous!!
