2 excellent products that I have used in my setup

[akrish01]

Greeting everyone

I would like to share the pictures of my home theatre setup. In particular, I would like to introduce 2 products to our fellow forum members.

https://picasaweb.google.com/akrish01/HomeTheatre?authkey=Gv1sRgCOy6wIP2zJnMpQE

Both products are useful in cable management & will be helpful for people who want to modify their existing room, without much alteration like breaking, chipping, plastering etc.

The first one is Vogel cable column. I got this from a private seller in UK through my BIL. It comes in 2 sizes, 60 cm tall & 90 cm tall. I got the 60 cm model. It can be fitted with 2 arm supports on which equipment which weigh no more than 10 kg can be placed. I have placed my centre speaker on one support & a dvd player and cable set top box on another. The wiring is still not completely done as I need to buy some cable ties for tidying up. For more information on this product, please visit EFA 8835 Column system 64cm + AV support

The second one is call D-line cable trunking and is very similar to the casing patti thats available in the Indian market. But this one comes in the quadrant shape, making it ideal for running wires/ cables along the corners of the wall or the floor. Its a very good product that is available through an Indian vendor called element14 (element14 India | Formerly Farnell | Electronic Components Distributor). Search for cable trunking. Its slightly expensive but in my opinion, well worth the money as we can do away with civil modifications. For more information, take a look at http://www.d-line-it.com/.

I took some of the pictures without a flash as I thought that would give an idea of the lighting in the room. I have used dimmable halogen lighting. I propose changing over to LED bulbs shortly.

I have done acoustic panelling for the walls at a height of 3 from the floor, upto 7. Bass traps have also been done for the 4 corners. The acoustic ceiling is done only for the central portion of 6 in the ceiling as I had already done the gypsum ceiling when I constructed the room. The acoustic ceiling is suspended from the gypsum ceiling. Carpeting is done for the central area of the room. Beneath that, there is wooden flooring. My aim was to achieve acoustic treatment of approximately 50% of the total floor, wall & ceiling area and then see if the treatment served the purpose. I was happy with the results & hence did not think about further acoustic treatment.

Cable management behind the rack is a pending issue. I also propose disposing of this wide AV cabinet & getting a compact one as I have very little room to play around with my front towers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Arvind

 

[anujmishra]

Nice products indeed. In fact such products are not available in India. HT market is still in incubation stage in India.

 

[haisaikat]

some more detail close up pics would be better

 

[akrish01]

some more detail close up pics would be better

Hi

There is a zoom in tool available in picasa just above the photo. that should help us get a closer look. pls try it out & let me know if it helps

Arvind

 

[cmsajith]

It seems you have not treated the side reflections and the front n back reflections. Is there any reason? Also the side walls are treated where there are no reflections (except the center channel). I am just pointing out based on the pics. I am able to find the only effective treatment done in the room are the corners (bass traps), rest are not being used.

 

[akrish01]

It seems you have not treated the side reflections and the front n back reflections. Is there any reason? Also the side walls are treated where there are no reflections (except the center channel). I am just pointing out based on the pics. I am able to find the only effective treatment done in the room are the corners (bass traps), rest are not being used.

I did not go thru the process of finding the reflection points. The person I consulted said it's enough if I treat the middle portion of the walls as only the lower frequencies travel below that (i don't remember his exact words but he said something similar)
he asked me to try & treat 50% of all surfaces & I followed his advice

 

[cmsajith]

Sorry to say, what ever your av consultant had told you was BS and from your words it seems that he doesnt know anything about the acoustic treatment. Nothing in this room works for sound treatment except the basstraps.

 

[akrish01]

Sorry to say, what ever your av consultant had told you was BS and from your words it seems that he doesnt know anything about the acoustic treatment. Nothing in this room works for sound treatment except the basstraps.

You sir, must be a genius to deduce all of that without listening to a single note & just by looking at some 2 dimensional photographs of the setup.

 

[olly42]

Akrish01,

Neat set up. Havent heard of Vogel products but i am sure it must be good

 

[cmsajith]

You sir, must be a genius to deduce all of that without listening to a single note & just by looking at some 2 dimensional photographs of the setup.

Not much of brainstorming is required to check the basics. A simple common sense and some idea about the room size and the speaker locations is enough. Anyways if you are happy with whatever you have spent and the results, then leave this "idiot's comments" and by mistake never ever listen to any proper setup so that you can enjoy yours, my 2 cents.

 

[akrish01]

Not much of brainstorming is required to check the basics. A simple common sense and some idea about the room size and the speaker locations is enough. Anyways if you are happy with whatever you have spent and the results, then leave this "idiot's comments" and by mistake never ever listen to any proper setup so that you can enjoy yours, my 2 cents.

The mistake I won't be doing is listening to ur unsolicited advice (if I may call it that). Whatever else I do is my prerogative. I don't intend taking this exchange of words any further.

 

[cmsajith]

akrish01, I dont have any intention to derail your thread and none of the comments are personal. I felt you went ahead blindly with the suggestions from some AV consultant and hence I tried to point out some of the issues in this room (few are major) and tried to help you out in rectifying it. If you dont want to do a check on that, I have no issues. Since the changes are done as per your choice please ignore my unsolicited comments.

But as a forum member my concern was that there will be lot of people reading this thread who are planning to do HT rooms and they will be misguided. So I just wanted to inform them on the errors so that they can check others' posts to know how a proper acoustic treatment can be done, nothing else. period.

 

[mbhangui]

The mistake I won't be doing is listening to ur unsolicited advice (if I may call it that). Whatever else I do is my prerogative. I don't intend taking this exchange of words any further.

I feel cmsajith made the comments with all good intention. Purpose of hifivision forum is to share knowledge. You may want to follow excellent discussion started by cmsajith on this

http://www.hifivision.com/av-enhanc...ngroom-cum-theaterroom-cum-listeningroom.html

 

[akrish01]

Let me make a few things very clear. Nowhere have I said that I have the best setup or i believe to have the best setup. I know I'm quite far from it. Nor have I said anywhere that people can follow what I have done & expect it to work for them. The purpose of this thread was to highlight the 2 products which I found nobody had used in this forum.

I had a lot of constraints & I worked around the constraints and got this room done. But as I see it, there's a lot of scope for improvement as I myself like to do a lot of experimenting with speaker setup, listening position etc. And this room would continually be under development as I try to tweak the system to get the best out of it.

But I alone know the difference between the untreated room & the room after acoustic treatment. There was quite a difference. But whether the difference is due to the total treatment or the bass traps alone, I don't know as I have not had an expert evaluate the room after completion.

What I found offensive was cmsajiths point blank dismissal of the acoustic treatment without knowing the "before" & "after" effects or in other words, without listening to it.

There's a saying in tamil which goes like this:

Whatever you see is not the truth; whatever you hear is not the truth; you will find the truth only upon detailed analysis.

A person maybe knowledgeable but along with that knowledge, there has to be humility, not arrogance. I didn't like the tone of cmsajith's remarks & that's why I took strong exception to it. I think anyone in my shoes would have done the same.

 

[cmsajith]

I never write off your effort in that room, I just pointed out some of the errors you have done and I had also mentioned the bass traps can really work in that room. You should understand that some of the basic treatment is a must for any HT room and it doesnt require any site visiting / listening and moreover those can be simulated also. But you took it as a review of your effort. I apologize if you felt it that way. Moreover your consultant was knowingly/unknowingly misguiding you, so I had mentioned his advice as BS.

From your pictures I assume your room size would be 15' - 17' L x 10' 6" - 12' W x 9' - 9' 6" H. For such a small room broadband and side reflection treatment are a must, but it is not there in that room. Room treatment is not done for the equipment, its for the room, so auditions are irrelevant before the basic treatment. Following are some of the issues I tried to make you understand,

- The side walls are supposed to be treated for broadband absorbtion / diffusion esp the mid/low mid/highs. Since these freq travel ~linearly and hence the panels should be in its path. But you have treated the side walls from 3' - 7' ht and unless your speakers are wall mounted above 3', none of those freqs will ever reach that location (may be 3rd/4th order reflections from the centre speaker / opposite wall surrounds). Moreover your speakers are FS w/ tweeters @ ~2.5'. So the side wall treatment which you had done in that room is of no use.
The low freq will be more concentrated at the corners esp tri-corners. Also a less amount of LF concentration will be there at the centre of the side wall-floor / wall-ceiling joints other than the tri-corners, but its not a big issue.

- In a small room the back wall requires low freq absorbtion while reflecting \ diffusing the high/mid freqs.

- Broadband treatment is not a must for front walls, but a minimal treatment is required if any of the surround speakers reflections or the 3rd/4th order reflections reach there. If diffusers are used in the room, then its a must.

- Usually the ceiling can be treated at the last if required. Clouds can be used as a very effective low freq absorber.

Once the basic treatments are done, listening / taking room measurements is required to find the specific issues and treat them based on the requirement.

So my point was not to go blindly follow your AV consultant and trying to make you understand to know what you are doing by reading through the threads in this forum / similar forums. Since you have followed your AV consultant's comments and the basic side reflections and other treatments are not done properly, the knowledge of your AV consultant should be doubted.

 

[akrish01]

I never write off your effort in that room, I just pointed out some of the errors you have done and I had also mentioned the bass traps can really work in that room. You should understand that some of the basic treatment is a must for any HT room and it doesnt require any site visiting / listening and moreover those can be simulated also. But you took it as a review of your effort. I apologize if you felt it that way. Moreover your consultant was knowingly/unknowingly misguiding you, so I had mentioned his advice as BS.

From your pictures I assume your room size would be 15' - 17' L x 10' 6" - 12' W x 9' - 9' 6" H. For such a small room broadband and side reflection treatment are a must, but it is not there in that room. Room treatment is not done for the equipment, its for the room, so auditions are irrelevant before the basic treatment. Following are some of the issues I tried to make you understand,

- The side walls are supposed to be treated for broadband absorbtion / diffusion esp the mid/low mid/highs. Since these freq travel ~linearly and hence the panels should be in its path. But you have treated the side walls from 3' - 7' ht and unless your speakers are wall mounted above 3', none of those freqs will ever reach that location (may be 3rd/4th order reflections from the centre speaker / opposite wall surrounds). Moreover your speakers are FS w/ tweeters @ ~2.5'. So the side wall treatment which you had done in that room is of no use.
The low freq will be more concentrated at the corners esp tri-corners. Also a less amount of LF concentration will be there at the centre of the side wall-floor / wall-ceiling joints other than the tri-corners, but its not a big issue.

- In a small room the back wall requires low freq absorbtion while reflecting \ diffusing the high/mid freqs.

- Broadband treatment is not a must for front walls, but a minimal treatment is required if any of the surround speakers reflections or the 3rd/4th order reflections reach there. If diffusers are used in the room, then its a must.

- Usually the ceiling can be treated at the last if required. Clouds can be used as a very effective low freq absorber.

Once the basic treatments are done, listening / taking room measurements is required to find the specific issues and treat them based on the requirement.

So my point was not to go blindly follow your AV consultant and trying to make you understand to know what you are doing by reading through the threads in this forum / similar forums. Since you have followed your AV consultant's comments and the basic side reflections and other treatments are not done properly, the knowledge of your AV consultant should be doubted.

If only you had the patience to write this detailed explanation in the beginning itself rather than dismissing my setup with disdain, this discussion would have been a bit more productive instead of being acrimonius.

Anyways, the person whom I consulted for the panelling is a very reputed person in Chennai - I'm not naming him for obvious reasons. One of my uncles was quite helpful in setting up a one on one meeting with him. He showed me his listening room & then suggested that I can do the panelling in the side walls from 3' to 7' height. This meeting took place about 2 years ago & hence I'm not able to recall all the details we discussed.

But i do remember one thing vividly. I initially had no plans of doing the acoustic panelling. At that time, I just had the Denon receiver & the philips dvd player with a CRT tv. The speakers that I was using at that time was the speakers from a sony midi system. While listening to music, the room was very boomy & I couldn't sit through one track - i would get a headache. So, I decided to get some minimum panelling done & met this consultant.

When I told him about the problem of boominess with the speaker that I was using, he said that these midi systems are called boom boxes and hence, their speakers are bound to be boomy. He asked me try connecting a tower speaker & told me that the boominess wouldn't be there. Luckily my neighbour had Boston Acoustics Tower speaker & was kind enough to lend me his speakers for a day when I asked him. So I tried it out & sure enough found that it wasn't as boomy as the sony speakers.

So, there's no doubt that my consultant was knowledgeable. I give him consultant the benefit of the doubt as I had indicated that I had budget constraints & didn't have too much money to blow on panelling. So, that maybe the reason why he suggested that I do the panelling that way.

My panelling & HT room are about 1.5 years old now. I didn't have the time to upload pictures due to various personal & business commitments which kept me busy. My father, who was a movie & music buff used to regularly watch movies & listen to music in this room. He became seriously ill in Feb & subsequently passed away in early March.

I also found this article on ehow regarding acoustic panelling.
How to Mount Acoustic Panels | eHow.com

My next plan is to get a media player sometime when funds permit (and when the $ becomes a little weaker) & also get rid of this wide AV rack and get a compact one so that I have more room to play around with my front speaker placement. When I do that, I shall look into your suggestion. I don't want to do anything now as it might not be effective if I move my speakers closer.

 

[cmsajith]

Dumbfounded to see how people are making decisions. Its good that you didnt reveal the name of your consultant.