Rob W. shared with us a picture of his home theater and we were AMAZED by his DIY acoustic panels. When we gushed over them on the podcast, he shared with us how he did it. Thanks Rob and congrats on the coolest DIY panels we’ve ever seen
From Alan: As to the acoustic panels, I watched a ton of DIY Acoustic Panel videos on YouTube and distilled everyone’s technique down to: 1×4 frames (to maintain an air gap behind the absorption material), Roxul Safe’n’Sound Insulation or Owens-Corning 703 glass fiber panels, and cheap muslin material for backside of the panel. A DIY Acoustic Panel thread on AVS here http://www.avsforum.com/forum/19-dedicated-theater-design-construction/1316623-diy-custom-printed-movie-poster-acoustic-panels-cheap.html told me about some fairly good AT printed fabrics from www.spoonflower.com (note that they require you take responsibility for having the “legal” ability to print the poster by clicking a check box). For a good turnout, you need a 150 dpi image to upload.
Read more…
Alan recently finished his own basement home theater, and he wanted to pass along some tips he learned along the way:
1) He suggests reading books and making use of your local library. Some specific titles he recommends:
- Taunton’s Remodeling a Basement
- Taunton’s Wiring Complete
- Black & Decker Complete Guide to Home Wiring (really good wiring diagrams)
- Black & Decker The Complete Guide to Finishing Basements
2) For managing cables and power inlets in your walls, Allen found the least expensive recessed wall plates on Amazon. Rather than sitting flush on the wall like regular wall plates, these recessed wall plates let you plug things into the wall, or extend a power connection (extremely handy for ceiling-mounted projectors or wall-mounted flat panels) without the power cords protruding out of the wall:
Read more…
Looking for a projector? Here is our definitive guide of what is out there that we would recommend in descending price order:
Until the new crop gets announced at CEDIA, here’s what’s out there for under $10,000:
1) Sony VPL-VW350ES: $10,000. Genuine 4K (4096 x 2160). Motorized zoom, focus, and lens shift. Low lag for gaming. Limited to 8-bit with no WCG or HDR. So it’s just a resolution bump.
http://store.sony.com/…/cat-27-catid-all-tv-home-theater-pr…
2) Epson LS10000: $8000. Laser light engine (2 blue lasers, one powering a yellow phosphor). 3 reflective LCD (liquid crystal on quartz) 1080p panels with pseudo-4K (think e-shift or “wobulation”). Powered zoom, focus, and lens shift. Has HDCP 2.2. Can do DCI-P3 color.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do…
3) Epson LS9600e: $6000. Same as the LS10000, but 1080p only. Also has Wireless HD connection box with 5 HDMI inputs.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do…
Read more…
Tom – I’m reprinting an email I got from one of our awesome listeners – John. While we have a lot of different kinds of listeners, I’m always impressed at just how smart they are. On top of that, they care about audio quality to do these sorts of things. Great work John and thanks for sharing!
__________________________
A few podcasts ago, when discussing Audio Diffmaker, Tom suggested we use that application to see what we’re getting from iTunes Match. Since I’ve already done quite a bit with audio difference files, I don’t expect to learn much there, but I did look at and listen to an original file, a matched file, and a Mastered for iTunes file.
The track is “It Could Happen to You” by Diana Krall from the album From This Moment On. I picked this track randomly from the few I could have used for this test. Read more…
I received this rant from Henry a few days ago. It was so good, I couldn’t help but ask his permission to post it. He’s graciously agreed.
Tom,
I am really impressed with the quantifiable benefits Yamaha is bringing to market with their new Aventage line of AVRs. However I am really getting pissed off by the way they are marketing them…and starting to lose faith in the credibility of all their otherwise legitimate claims.
For example:
“The optimum sound fuse” Read more…
Rob W. shared with us a picture of his home theater and we were AMAZED by his DIY acoustic panels. When we gushed over them on the podcast, he shared with us how he did it. Thanks Rob and congrats on the coolest DIY panels we’ve ever seen
