hacker-pschorr

Member since '07

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/member.php?u=7711564

It is a great place, but I also like to get the opinions of this collective.

cobalt

I am currently building my fourth surround system and I decided to go with the Totem Tribe in wall line. http://totemacoustic.com/en/hi-fi/in...s=tribe-series. These speakers will not break your budget and have a great sound. These will give you a lot of flexibility. I am using two in wall subs on either side since i don't have the floor space to use floor mounted sub. These will get down to 48hz a little less than I would like but the subs will round it out. The room is only 26 by 22 feet but should have all the sound i need coupled with another Arcam AVR600 these should sound pretty close to my Dali Helicon's in my main surround sound system.

I will be building these into the wall and covering the wall with a decorative acoustic fabric to allow the sound to travel through as you will need to do with a screen that allows sound through.

Unfortunately, like most quality cables these too need

The speakers require several hours of actual music playing time as a minimal break-in period. During this time, refrain from playing them at very loud levels. You will notice a definite gradual improvement in the cohesiveness of the music reproduction as this occurs.

I figured LTC will enjoy that.

hacker-pschorr

Will you be using the Tribe's for all 5/7 locations or just the front?

What do you plan to power them with? I would really like to just use my Pioneer Elite receiver instead of a stack of amplifiers.

I do plan on sourcing a rather large amp to push the PPI subs though. I thought it would be cool to use two car amps mounted on the wall to reflect my custom car stereo days, but that would just be over complicated with power inverters.

cobalt

I am only going with 5 of them for this system right now but will wire for 7. Although The rears need to be tonally similar IMO the rears could be lesser models with your center and mains being the most important. The larger center and mains will deliver the full impact you need in home theater the rears are less critical but if you can match them all the better.

My new rooms ceilings raise from 8 feet front to 11 feet in the rear this is an addition and I didn't want to impact the lines of the house from the outside so I had to settle. I am placing the surround speakers up high behind the viewing area vs to the sides as I have them in my main viewing room. I can always adjust later since there is attic behind the upper suction. I am running added wire to the sides and rear just in case but I am 95% sure it will not be needed.

IMO to get the full impact of 7 speakers requires a deeper room. If you don't have 10 feet or more behind your listening area I have found it is a waste and doesn't give you the impact that 7 speakers offer in some cases it confuses the sound instead of just going with the 5 speaker setup. I can always adjust the sound later by adding speakers if I feel it warrants it, running the extra speaker wire in the walls is cheap since everything is open and in wall speaker wire is not overly expensive. My main viewing room is 40 feet long so the added speakers 15 feet back gives you tremendous depth that I do not observe as much with a smaller room where the speakers are much closer to you.

IMO the surround processor is most important for proper theater like reproduction although your Elite should be a good starting point. I have always been a huge fan of Arcam products for both sound and build quality. I have several of their units and use their AVR600 in my main system. Although my sub is a powered the AVR 600 at 120 watts per channel by 7 will be more power than I will ever need. Their AVR 400 is probably adequate for a lot less money. The unit is built for quality of sound and not quantity and is one of the best I have heard. The class G rail switching design gives you lots of power without generating tremendous amounts of heat. Since you are going with in wall speakers i would focus on the speakers first you can always change electronics later.

The Arcam lists for around $5k but they have been for sale on AG and other places for as little as $2900 used. You can pick up a 400 for around $2200 new. You can probably pick up a nice used Adcom high output amp for your subs cheap.

I hope this helps and best luck with the room.

Zapna

So, I'll throw my opinion in the mix as well. First, I owned a high-end home theater company in South Florida for many years as well as working as the COO of an international theater design-build firm (read acoustic design), so back in the day I knew my ****. But, I've been out of residential AV for over 15 years and am a little dated on equipment.

THIS ADVICE IS FOR MULTI-CHANNEL THEATER AUDIO ONLY - NO TWO CHANNEL

First, your question about speakers behind a screen. It is do-able with a good quality screen but you have to pay attention to the perforations vs pixel count as you can have some ugly side effects as an earlier post mentioned. (Back in my day I used woven screens instead of perf-ed.) You do get a little high-end roll-off due to the perforations, and most good processors used to allow for correcting for that. But honestly, I wouldn't do it. If you can get your left and right mains wider than the screen (distance between mains should be equal to distance to listening position from each speaker - think isosceles triangle) given your viewing distance, then put 'em in the wall and install a center channel speaker in the ceiling just in front of the screen. (I know, a bunch of you are going -WHAT?!?!) You just gotta trust me on this. It works GREAT. I actually have all THREE of my front speakers mounted in the ceiling in front of the screen. Sounds great.

Now, as far as types of speakers, I strongly recommend using identical speakers for all channels. 7.1 DD or DTS formats offer the ability to send full range info to all channels, even if most movies do not utilize the opportunity. Some do, however, and it sounds AWESOME with a perfect tonal match as sound transitions around the room. Cross over all of the speakers at the same frequency (80hz or below) in your receiver setup and dump the rest into the LFE channel ( the point one of 7.1). Mount your side channels in-line side-to-side with your listening area, high up, and your rears behind you, high up. If you cant get at least three feet between your listening position and the back wall, then mount the rears in the ceiling against the back wall pointing down. (personally, I prefer all of the speakers in the ceiling pointing down, but I like a more diffusive rear sound field than is popular these days) But really try to get that space behind you. For all speaker locations, use a speaker with two woofers and one tweeter mounted between them (usually they are referred to as in-wall center channels but will work great in all locations).

But the MOST IMPORTANT THING you can do is make the room a "good" sounding size. Check out this site http://www.cinemasource.com/articles...des/modes.html for the basic principles of room size and how it will impact the sound DRAMATICALLY. I can (and have) put a hundred thousand worth of gear in a bad sounding room and it still sounds bad. I can put five grand of gear in a good sounding room and it sounds great. Take advantage of the opportunity of having bare studs to adjust the room size to an optimal size for "good" sound. It will be the best thing you can do for your room. If you can spare the space, build a second wall in front of the first, with the studs offset and about a 1/4" gap between the bottom (and top) plates. Do NOT put any dry wall on the two sides facing one another. Load the walls with insulation. This will completely decouple the two walls of drywall and eliminate any resonances. If you cant do that, then hang different thickness drywall on either side (if you have 5/8 on one side, put 1/2" on the other) of the wall.

Finally, I re-did my theater last year with the equipment (video and audio) coming in around five grand and it sounds incredible, so it can be done. I'll see if I cant post some pics of the speakers/etc for you.

Have fun with it!

Brad

Zapna

Here are some pics of the theater in progress. Speaker grills are not yet in place.


MAINS IN FRONT OF SCREEN POINTING DOWN - VERY UNCONVENTIONAL, BUT WORKS GREAT


REARS ALSO POINTING DOWN, AS ARE SIDES.


AS YOU CAN SEE, IN-WALL SPEAKERS WERE NOT AN OPTION!

I hosted our regional PCA Super Bowl party this year. Room worked great.

Jim Devine

Speakers behind screens require perforated screens.
A local very high end shop had to work with Stewart
on more than one screen perforation pattern to get it right on a big $$$ installation. The pixels from
the projector were hitting the perforations and
distorting. Something to consider.