Bencorn's Apartment Home Theater

Dedicated room, finally. No more cramming stuff into my apartment or having to deal with white walls and mounting my projector on shelves. Tore out the closet and all the built in shelving. Pulled all the hardwood floors out and put in carpet. Took out the ceiling lights and put in 6 can lights controlled by a lutron ir dimmer. Painted the room a burnt orange color. Almost like rust but by far less reflective than the white semigloss I've had to deal with for years.

The Slightly Updated Gear
Pioneer VSX-72TXV Receiver
Harmony 880 remote
Epson 8100 Projector
Polk Lsi9 Fronts
Polk LsiC
Polk LsiF/X
AV123 MFW-15 Subwoofer
Luton IR Dimmer
Xbox 360
HTPC running XBMC
Server with 11 tb storage
106" Greywolf Screen
Another Sectional Couch

Front.jpg

Front View

Uncovered.jpg

Covers Removed

RightSpeaker.jpg

Right Speaker with new stand

Subwoofer.jpg

A welcome addition after being sub-less for far too long, and my center perched on top.

LeftSpeaker.jpg

Left Speaker

Projector-1.jpg

A properly mounted projector, good riddance bookshelf.

Lutron.jpg

Very slick once programmed into my harmony, probably the best 30 dollars I've ever spent in home theater.

Rears.jpg

Rear View, ignore the hole, that's where all my switches used to be.

Comments, questions, and most importantly... suggestions?
 
Looks nice!

I love seeing threads like this, where you follow a setup from the dorm room, to an apartment, and finally into a house/condo, even if most of it has been replaced by that point.

I am guessing that your LSiF/X speakers are in bipole mode? How do you like them mounted to the side walls behind the listening position versus having them mounted on the rear wall? I guess with your couch setup it might be difficult to mount them to the sides of the listening position in dipole mode, but did you try that out as well?

I do have two suggestions. First, I would try to move your LSi9s away from the side walls, if possible. Those speakers do well with some room around them. Giving them more breathing room and adding a dedicated amplifier (my second suggestion) for the LCRs down the line will help the setup to really shine.

I used to own the LSi9s. They are hungry little buggers, possibly some of the most power hungry bookshelves I have ever owned. I had them paired to my Emotiva XPA-5 amplifier in the past, and I found them to really scale nicely with the extra power. Now that you have them in a dedicated room, you may find that you will be driving them harder, and the receiver could be a limiting factor going forward.
 
Very nice, congratulations on the new setup! It looks fantastic :). The IR dimmer is awesome. I'm currently running my setup in an apartment... perhaps I'll post some pictures sometime in their own thread. Your first posts looked eerily similar to mine :p.
 
Nice setup.

If that MFW didn't look completely content in the middle there, I'd almost suggest doing a sub crawl IF you had room to do so.
 
@TESLA, they actually sound a lot better on the sides like they are. In my last apartment they were ok up on the shelf but weren't very immersive but now it brings the sound to the right levels and really sounds like you're there. I was going to try putting them next to the couch but I plan on moving the couch slightly more forward and we're going to put a bar and 2-3 barstools behind the couch for a second row of seating and if I had put the speakers on the side it would have sounded weird from the back row. 7.1 might fix that but that would be somewhere down the road but it won't be anytime soon.

@Golden, you should definitely post pics, its fun to go back in my thread and see what I started with. The IR dimmer actually gets talked about the most by people who have watched movies with us. "Great sound and video quality....sure but you can actually turn your lights off without getting up...amazing"

@Lenin, Yea I actually plan on doing the sub crawl soon because I have room in front of the left speaker next to the couch where it could be used as a side table or in the back of the room. And that would free up some space to pull the speakers in from the wall because I have started to notice that the sound stage sounds smaller despite the fact they are spread further apart. I think the sub needs to be in the back of the room though, they have always sounded better there for me. And ultimately I'd like to add an emotiva amp to power the speakers but this is going to have to do for a while.
 
bencorn said:
@Lenin, Yea I actually plan on doing the sub crawl soon because I have room in front of the left speaker next to the couch where it could be used as a side table or in the back of the room. And that would free up some space to pull the speakers in from the wall because I have started to notice that the sound stage sounds smaller despite the fact they are spread further apart. I think the sub needs to be in the back of the room though, they have always sounded better there for me. And ultimately I'd like to add an emotiva amp to power the speakers but this is going to have to do for a while.
Click to expand...

I think you definitely have the right idea here. It's hard to tell just by looking at it, but the back of the room *might* not work with how close either of the doors are to either of the corners. You won't know without doing a crawl, though. It'll be nice to free up your L/R from the walls, either way.
 
Did you decline to paint the ceiling as well because of aesthetic reasons or because you found the glare is minimal (as compared to white side walls)? I've just recently been researching projector setups but would have to deal with a white ceiling and unsure how big of a deal it is (the people on avsforum are very dramatic about anything that isn't perfect :) )
 
Last edited:
@rhouck, I've found the reflections off the ceiling to be minimal. They're there but they don't bother me enough to paint the ceiling. The wall paint alone was an extremely vast improvement over all my previous setups.

@Ricky, thanks. It was a lot of fun to build. Still got some more work to do and then it'll be time to just kick back and enjoy it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top