We have arrived!!! ....After all those years of reading Audio-Video Interiors, planning, building, and accumulating, I've finally built the home theater that's as good as it's going to get ......for me. Much of what we wanted in this particular house (other than the adjacent greenbelt), has to do with the space it affords us. While the previous house was all about the practicality aspect of home buying and having everything we needed with nothing that we didn't: this house was about not compromising. Well, at least in our solidly school teacher-middle income world anyway. At the core of this house, is a game/family/media room which is so big, that we had to cut it into a two-thirds/one-third split with a large cabinet/bookcase system that we're building in to the back section! As much of a audio-video nut (within reason) as I've been, I've never had a home-theater that wasn't a double-duty living room! However, that didn't stop me from accumulating all the equipment necessary to run a full-scale home theater. Let's just say that it was a little over-spec'd for the spaces it was operating in......
- The dual-tower cabinet that I designed and help build was over-sized.
- The B&W ASW675 was too much sub for every room it ever lived in.
- The KEF iQ5 tower speakers were too much speaker for a seated position less than 15' away from it.
- The fully self-powered 2nd-Zone system never came into play in the old house at all.
- Having 2 other secondary monitors was more conceptual than useful.
- Even the 48" Vizio main monitor was too big for the space between the cabinet towers.
Then we moved this summer. If I hadn't said so in previous posts, this house is kind of a "fixer-upper". Not in the truest sense of the term, but in reality of constantly having something to work on, YES..... yes it is! In fact, I'm avoiding going to paint our previously orange-leaning Peach bathroom a more soothing light-blue, by writing this piece! But, as they say; "the bones are there". Actually, there's a little meat on them as well.
Denon AVR-3802 A/V Receiver
B&W ASW600 Powered Subwoofer
B&W LM-1 5-Speaker Sets
Two sets of each of the above...... were left at the house......
Along with 7 sets of 6.5" in-ceiling speakers. I don't know that they are the B&W CM65s, but I wouldn't bet against it since all the other speakers were made by them and are of that vintage. Believe me, I know. Ironically, in the last couple of years before we moved out here to the Dallas area, I sold this exact equipment at the audio store I worked at in Lubbock! Those in-ceiling speakers are mounted in locations all over the house run through level controls in those spaces. One group terminates behind where my main system now resides upstairs and the other downstairs in what my wife calls the "living room" that adjoins the kitchen. It's really more "family room", but she's the boss!
Speaking of the wife.... things in the house were progressing..... slowly, but progressing till she couldn't handle the smell of the pet-stained carpet any more. First went the downstairs carpet about two months ago, the game/media room about a month ago, then we decided to speed up the process about two weeks ago and ordered new carpet. So the rest of the upstairs rooms got their carpet ripped out and we lived on sub-floor for a week. Saturday, the installers came and installed the carpet. At the same time, my father-in-law was working on the built-in in the back of the room.
It's been awhile since I've had my A/V equipment set up properly in a carpeted room with decent acoustics. Wow! It sounds great!
Oh yeah: can't forget the new 55" Sony 4K TV as well. This is just a start. Yes, there's still stuff to do, and the room will actually sound better when we load the built-in with books and decorative items, so that end of the room will deaden down some more. For now; it's a pretty good start.
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