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Hi guys - I'm new here!
So, I'm planning a homebuilt home theater / stereo music listening configuration for my living room.
The room has solid wood t&g ceiling and hardwood floors (no attic) the space can be described as very open and connected to several rooms without doors.
The room in the diagram is 15' wide by 23.5' deep with the screen on the 15' end of the rectangle. Ceiling is at a low pitch from about 9.5' to 10.5' across the width of the room. As mentioned, this room has many openings to adjacent rooms. A hallway to another part of the house, an exterior door, a skylight opens the top half of the wall between the home theater room and kitchen and two open doorways also lead intoto the kitchen, which is another 15' x 23.5' space next to the living room.
Current viewing distance is 11 feet, but we have been thinking about moving back a foot or so. We do plan to eventually upgrade to either LCD of the same size, or a projector with a huge screen, but not for another year or so.
some background: I'm getting tired of headphones. I work from home and during the day I want to listen to FLAC or otherwise high resolution versions of my favorite electronic ambient music while I'm working. (I have some FLAC files saved up, but have not had a chance to hear them) Most of the music I listen to is devoid of vocals but has layers upon layers of digitally manipulated acoustic recordings ranging all throughout the frequency band, so I am interested in reference quality sound because I've never had the luxury of listening to speakers that didn't bother me after a while or make me feel like I couldn't hear part of the music - and I've got all this great music! So far, all I can find that doesn't bother me is nice headphones turned down to a moderate level. We also watch lots films in the evenings on almost a daily basis, so the system needs to serve both HT and music listening purposes.
I've been casually searching the internet on and off for a couple years. Actually, I got a little sidetracked and ended up building http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/l...pecs_and_more/ - a set of 4 labhorns, 250 lbs each, for the purpose of producing really loud bass at frequencies nearing 28hz for a DJ friend (they sound great, but require two 5,000 watt class D amps in order to run properly, and transporting them is a bit of an ordeal.) SO yeah - I totally forgot about the HT project, BUT I learned a lot about speaker building and look forward to using those skills again. So, now is the time to get it done, while my clients aren't as business focused as they are during the rest of the year.
While sifting through a sea of subjective reviews and opinions and so forth, I learned about Linkwitz and Zaph Audio as well as a few other speaker designers who approached things with an objective scientific mindset and found ways to produce reference quality sound on a reasonable budget. Keeping an eye out for anything else out there along these lines, I sifted through everything I could find for a few more days, eventually arriving back at the John Krutke and his ZA5 family of loudspeaker designs. http://zaphaudio.com/ZA5/ and Madisound's convenient package deals that set you up with everything needed to build these excellent loudspeakers http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/zaph-audio/
Going by John's advice concerning choosing and placing the ZA5 speakers, I have developed three possible setups to run in my living room. Though there's lots of room in the space, I don't really have anywhere to put additional surrounds other than two rear surrounds hanging from the ceiling, so I'm shooting to stick with 5.1 audio for now. Keeping that in mind, I created three scenarios (the first being the best, and so on) that just happen to have descending price points, any of which I can meet. The thing that is stumping me is that the setup I want the most, based on what I read at the Zaph Audio site, is quite possibly not going to be effective in my living room. That is where I need your help!
If you look at the floor plan for my living room, supplied previously in this cavalcade of logharrea, you will see that I have the MMTMMs located with their backs about 12-14" away from the wall and a foot or two from the sides of the television. (The center channel doesn't show because it's sitting below the television.) Finally, the surrounds are mounted to the ceiling and can hang as low as two feet from their mounting point. I don't know if this means I'll need to use the reduced BSC crossover or not, but I plan to position them as little as one foot from the ceiling pointing in whatever direction you guys advise.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario I - MMTMM front L/R channels
(best HT / best MUSIC)
Onkyo TX-NR3009 - 1500
amplifier for added power to front left and right speakers. $700
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.5tt - pair - front channels - 550
za5.3c - single - center channel - 170
za5.2 - pair - rear channels - 245
sub with passive radiator - 550
MDF - 300
wire - 200
power conditioner(s) - 200
$4500
I originally created this scenario because I wanted to get the best sound for the buck, and this 'sounds' like the best value for a high-quality build-it-yourself system out there - especially if I invested in a premium 4ohm amp to run the MMTMMs when playing music. However, I read in John's notes about the MMTMM - and many other designs in the ZA5 collection - require 2+ feet of space from the wall to the back of the speaker (or in one case the "front of the baffle" was mentioned as the point to measure to.) Anyway, my point is that the front of my DLP is around 2 feet away from the wall and it just seems like it would be awkward to have this huge speaker sitting that far out into the room. So, I am worried that I could just be doing it wrong by attempting to rationalize running the MMTMMs. Nevertheless, this is the configuration that I prefer, because it offers the possibility of enjoying really clear music and films at moderate listening levels.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario II - MTM x 3 up front
(great HT / okay music)
Onkyo TX-NR3009 - 1500
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.3c - triad - left, center and right front channels - 500
za5.2 - pair - rear channels - 245
sub with passive radiator - 550
MDF - 300
wire - 200
power conditioner(s) - 200
$3500
This scenario compensates for the issue with the front left and right channel placement requirements. The 5.3c is supposed to be fine for use as front left and right channels when there isn't room for 2+ feet of clearance form the back wall, but there is the commonly-mentioned issues associated with MTM loudspeakers to deal with, which leads me to scenario III:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario III - MT satellites
(great HT / okay music?)
Onkyo TX-NR818 - 850
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.3c - single - center channel - 500
za5.2 - four - front and rear L/R channels - 245
ported sub - 445
MDF - 200
wire - 200
power conditioner - 100
$2500
Going by John's loudspeaker placement criteria for ZA5 loudspeakers, this arrangement might not be that great for really turning up the music, but it should be more forgiving about placement issues and do an excellent job with movie sound. Also, I wanted to add that I know nothing about tuning or choosing subwoofers to mate with a system, so I chose the most interesting thing I could find at Madisound in the hopes that it will perform as well as the reviewers claim on the Madisound site. That is the subwoofer listed under the speaker kits in each scenario.
So guys… what should I do? Let me know if you see other flaws or possible blindspots. Let me know if you need the dimensions of my living room or something like that. I'm going to put a lot of effort into the aesthetic portion off this project, so I don't want to wish I had taken a different direction. That's why I came here!
P.S. - let me know if I'm wayyyy off track. I'm really open to anything. The direction I'm going might not be the right one.
So, I'm planning a homebuilt home theater / stereo music listening configuration for my living room.
The room has solid wood t&g ceiling and hardwood floors (no attic) the space can be described as very open and connected to several rooms without doors.
The room in the diagram is 15' wide by 23.5' deep with the screen on the 15' end of the rectangle. Ceiling is at a low pitch from about 9.5' to 10.5' across the width of the room. As mentioned, this room has many openings to adjacent rooms. A hallway to another part of the house, an exterior door, a skylight opens the top half of the wall between the home theater room and kitchen and two open doorways also lead intoto the kitchen, which is another 15' x 23.5' space next to the living room.
Current viewing distance is 11 feet, but we have been thinking about moving back a foot or so. We do plan to eventually upgrade to either LCD of the same size, or a projector with a huge screen, but not for another year or so.
some background: I'm getting tired of headphones. I work from home and during the day I want to listen to FLAC or otherwise high resolution versions of my favorite electronic ambient music while I'm working. (I have some FLAC files saved up, but have not had a chance to hear them) Most of the music I listen to is devoid of vocals but has layers upon layers of digitally manipulated acoustic recordings ranging all throughout the frequency band, so I am interested in reference quality sound because I've never had the luxury of listening to speakers that didn't bother me after a while or make me feel like I couldn't hear part of the music - and I've got all this great music! So far, all I can find that doesn't bother me is nice headphones turned down to a moderate level. We also watch lots films in the evenings on almost a daily basis, so the system needs to serve both HT and music listening purposes.
I've been casually searching the internet on and off for a couple years. Actually, I got a little sidetracked and ended up building http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/l...pecs_and_more/ - a set of 4 labhorns, 250 lbs each, for the purpose of producing really loud bass at frequencies nearing 28hz for a DJ friend (they sound great, but require two 5,000 watt class D amps in order to run properly, and transporting them is a bit of an ordeal.) SO yeah - I totally forgot about the HT project, BUT I learned a lot about speaker building and look forward to using those skills again. So, now is the time to get it done, while my clients aren't as business focused as they are during the rest of the year.
While sifting through a sea of subjective reviews and opinions and so forth, I learned about Linkwitz and Zaph Audio as well as a few other speaker designers who approached things with an objective scientific mindset and found ways to produce reference quality sound on a reasonable budget. Keeping an eye out for anything else out there along these lines, I sifted through everything I could find for a few more days, eventually arriving back at the John Krutke and his ZA5 family of loudspeaker designs. http://zaphaudio.com/ZA5/ and Madisound's convenient package deals that set you up with everything needed to build these excellent loudspeakers http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/zaph-audio/
Going by John's advice concerning choosing and placing the ZA5 speakers, I have developed three possible setups to run in my living room. Though there's lots of room in the space, I don't really have anywhere to put additional surrounds other than two rear surrounds hanging from the ceiling, so I'm shooting to stick with 5.1 audio for now. Keeping that in mind, I created three scenarios (the first being the best, and so on) that just happen to have descending price points, any of which I can meet. The thing that is stumping me is that the setup I want the most, based on what I read at the Zaph Audio site, is quite possibly not going to be effective in my living room. That is where I need your help!
If you look at the floor plan for my living room, supplied previously in this cavalcade of logharrea, you will see that I have the MMTMMs located with their backs about 12-14" away from the wall and a foot or two from the sides of the television. (The center channel doesn't show because it's sitting below the television.) Finally, the surrounds are mounted to the ceiling and can hang as low as two feet from their mounting point. I don't know if this means I'll need to use the reduced BSC crossover or not, but I plan to position them as little as one foot from the ceiling pointing in whatever direction you guys advise.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario I - MMTMM front L/R channels
(best HT / best MUSIC)
Onkyo TX-NR3009 - 1500
amplifier for added power to front left and right speakers. $700
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.5tt - pair - front channels - 550
za5.3c - single - center channel - 170
za5.2 - pair - rear channels - 245
sub with passive radiator - 550
MDF - 300
wire - 200
power conditioner(s) - 200
$4500
I originally created this scenario because I wanted to get the best sound for the buck, and this 'sounds' like the best value for a high-quality build-it-yourself system out there - especially if I invested in a premium 4ohm amp to run the MMTMMs when playing music. However, I read in John's notes about the MMTMM - and many other designs in the ZA5 collection - require 2+ feet of space from the wall to the back of the speaker (or in one case the "front of the baffle" was mentioned as the point to measure to.) Anyway, my point is that the front of my DLP is around 2 feet away from the wall and it just seems like it would be awkward to have this huge speaker sitting that far out into the room. So, I am worried that I could just be doing it wrong by attempting to rationalize running the MMTMMs. Nevertheless, this is the configuration that I prefer, because it offers the possibility of enjoying really clear music and films at moderate listening levels.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario II - MTM x 3 up front
(great HT / okay music)
Onkyo TX-NR3009 - 1500
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.3c - triad - left, center and right front channels - 500
za5.2 - pair - rear channels - 245
sub with passive radiator - 550
MDF - 300
wire - 200
power conditioner(s) - 200
$3500
This scenario compensates for the issue with the front left and right channel placement requirements. The 5.3c is supposed to be fine for use as front left and right channels when there isn't room for 2+ feet of clearance form the back wall, but there is the commonly-mentioned issues associated with MTM loudspeakers to deal with, which leads me to scenario III:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scenario III - MT satellites
(great HT / okay music?)
Onkyo TX-NR818 - 850
speakers - zaph audio / madisound
za5.3c - single - center channel - 500
za5.2 - four - front and rear L/R channels - 245
ported sub - 445
MDF - 200
wire - 200
power conditioner - 100
$2500
Going by John's loudspeaker placement criteria for ZA5 loudspeakers, this arrangement might not be that great for really turning up the music, but it should be more forgiving about placement issues and do an excellent job with movie sound. Also, I wanted to add that I know nothing about tuning or choosing subwoofers to mate with a system, so I chose the most interesting thing I could find at Madisound in the hopes that it will perform as well as the reviewers claim on the Madisound site. That is the subwoofer listed under the speaker kits in each scenario.
So guys… what should I do? Let me know if you see other flaws or possible blindspots. Let me know if you need the dimensions of my living room or something like that. I'm going to put a lot of effort into the aesthetic portion off this project, so I don't want to wish I had taken a different direction. That's why I came here!
P.S. - let me know if I'm wayyyy off track. I'm really open to anything. The direction I'm going might not be the right one.
Patience, young Padawan. I think you need to give people at least a few hours to read your message... internet forums are people, not automation that is able to give an answer right back instantly. I'm one of the people on here more than others, and even I don't monitor the Guide 24/7. I would imagine you could understand that a lot of people are only able to check the internet once a day or even less.
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