First off, may I pass on a huge thank you to Tony for the opportunity to experience his excellent home cinema build and not only that but allowing me to bring along my UMIK-1 and REW in order to analyse it and hopefully learn something from it, I doubt many forum members would feel happy with anyone doing that. I was especially interested given that our rooms have almost identical dimensions but are polar opposite given that his is a purpose built cinema room whereas mine is our lounge with some serious issues, a floor to ceiling 3 metre wide bay window with floor to ceiling windows either side of that to mention just one. It also doesn’t help that my centre channel is placed on top of my subs, both of which are placed centrally within that bay. Certainly not ideal.
Tony was actually fully open to the idea of my using REW and what I might find and given that both his speakers and seating were moveable, was happy to move things around if need be if it was going to improve things.
Tony mentions at the start of this build thread why he had initial difficulty getting the necessary authority to build it, requiring foundations that could probably support a block of flats. As you approach his house you are taken aback by just how steep the incline is along with a superb view of the Thames and the east end of London. On a clear day that must be quite amazing.
I was greeted at the door by Tony and introduced to his wife Maggie (an amazing lady who could not have been more hospitable and who rustled up a great bacon and fried egg sandwich) and then taken out into the back garden where after a short walk you come across his impressive purpose-built cinema that given the rise of the ground towards it looks all the more imposing because of that.
As can be seen from the first post in this thread, you initially enter into the equipment room and from there into the cinema itself. The room has electric underfloor heating which must be a real boon on cold winter days. As you walk in there is no evidence of any speakers, just an enormous hush box for the projector and a screen that is placed quite high up on the far side. Tony explained that in 2000 when the room was built the maximum width that his CRT projector could handle was just 8’ and that dictated not only that but the placement of his very large hush box. It also now limits the effectiveness of Atmos speakers should he want to install them.
His seating is provided by five relatively modest chairs which are surprisingly comfortable (and heavy), although I didn’t get to sit in them for protracted periods so their long-term comfort was difficult to assess. Just ahead of the front row of seats were three flat-topped sturdy foot stools / small leather clad tables, more of which later.
Prior to my coming over Tony had already provided me with all the measurements of his room, seating position and speaker positions and so I was able to have a look at how he had it set it all up in REW Room Sim.
This revealed a potential issue which I was eager to check out, a steep null centred around 33Hz.
After a short initial chat I suggested to Tony that I get the measurements out of the way and then we could sit down to some listening. However Tony quite rightly argued that I might then be influenced in what I heard by the measurements I had obtained and he was quite right, so we kicked off with the intro to Oblivion (what else?) from the 2K disc given its much better audio track. We listened up to the point where the Alien pod takes off from the stadium whereupon Tony asks what did I think?
My initial thoughts were that it was firstly an excellent picture although somewhat higher than I was used to and that also the sound initially seemed to be coming from below the screen. When Tom started talking in the Oblivion intro, I felt his voice was coming from about two feet below the bottom of the screen. That having been said, once we had got about five minutes into the film my brain had adjusted and providing there was a character on the screen at the time, the voices weirdly were now coming directly from them. However where there wasn’t an object on the screen to relate to, the sound once again seemed to be coming from below. Probably given time my brain would adjust so that even those sounds would start appearing to come from the screen itself.
At the time of this build some 22 years ago Tony was advised to avoid AT screens and so had no option but to place things as he did above the speakers, he also did not have access to REW or anything similar as we do now. Another ‘difference’ that I noticed from mine, was that given his 3.8 metre viewing distance, this allowed for just a slightly more than 1:1.5 screen width to viewing distance ratio as opposed to my own very nearly 1:1 screen/distance viewing ratio along with a much lower screen. Another clip we used was the rope fall clip in Oblivion – a steady sweep from 100Hz down to 26Hz where that dip around 33Hz was indeed audible.
The sound of his system in general though was very good with a particularly detailed midrange from his Proac DT8 mains and a ‘fast’ and punchy bass provided by the twin ported JBL 4645C THX subs. His surrounds, also Proac DT8s, were not localisable at all. I initially thought they were mounted fairly high up on the side and rear walls but was surprised to find out they were actually mounted just 20cm off the floor. When the imaginary crowd roared out in the stadium scene of Oblivion the sound appeared to be coming from all around in exactly the position one might have expected it to be. Likewise in the engineer confrontation scene in Prometheus, the surround sound was emanating seamlessly from all around up to about 45 degrees above you. Tony seemed very pleased with that as it confirmed his decision not to go down the Atmos route due to the major work needed to removing the very large hush box and reposition the air ventilation system.
It was not quite fully Atmos-like in that there was nothing directly overhead, but not far off. I think for me personally I would turn the surround channels down about 2 or 3dB as in some scenes such as that clip from Prometheus, I felt they were in danger of overpowering the mains. I found the same later when we played some clips from the Hans Zimmer live in Prague BD.
We then played the intro part of Lucy and some of the later chapters and here the picture was absolutely stunning. The colours had an almost OLED like quality to them in their intensity and as might be expected the contrast was almost JVC level in this completely light-controlled room. I thought it was pretty good in mine but this was a step beyond. I seriously wonder just how much better the new JVC lasers could be in all honesty but the numbers speak for themselves, double the lumens, native 4K chip and in the case of the NZ9 that amazing 100mm lens and rave reviews everywhere. I can’t wait to see it. But for now I find it difficult to imagine an image much better than this one here.
I showed Tony what the Room Sim app revealed about the positioning of his seats and demonstrated how moving them had quite a beneficial effect on the bass.
As it was initially.
Moved laterally across the room.
Moved to the very centre of the room.
This is not normally recommended, however it does improve things at the lower frequencies, but then introduces more of a dip at around 80Hz which may in fact be more audible. Something worth trying though.
Tony was interested in taking this further so we then worked together to eventually come up with this, by also moving his JBL subs into the corner.
It also had the beneficial effect of increasing the immersion factor with the screen reducing the MLP to screen ratio from a little over 1:1.5 to 1:1.25.
Some time was spent moving things around with the subs being placed in the two front corners and with the MLP moved forwards 60cm and placed centrally. We then took some measurements in a box grid pattern of 30cm points around the new MLP. Measurements confirmed that movements laterally had only a slight effect whereas movements longitudinally had a very noticeable effect. We settled on about 30cm either side of the centre line of the room as being the best which worked out well for having the two main listening seats placed side by side in those positions and at the optimum distance from the screen according to the REW Room Sim app.
I then carried out a Dirac 3 calibration using the focussed image measurement pattern and the default Dirac target curve and then created another one with a +3dB bass boost ‘House Curve’ for films etc. Tony then asked whether raising the level of his Crown amps powering his subs would involve an unwelcome step in the FR so we tried it. It didn’t, instead it provided a useful additional slope from around 150Hz down. A useful tool for giving that bit of extra bass if needed. Finally we added a -3dB cut to the HF to maintain the overall 1dB per octave drop and taking a little of the ‘brightness’ out of the Proac tweeters.
Shown here are the three Dirac alternatives; default, bass boost and +3dB on the Crown sub amps, with the non-Dirac sweep offset below.
We then carried out some listening tests in this new position and the ‘punchy’ fast bass coming from those dual corner-located subs completely laid waste to any previously held beliefs that ported subs were somehow ‘slower’ and more ‘boomy’ for want of a better word. While they lacked a certain weight/depth compared to my own twin 18” sealed subs, dropping rapidly as they did below the ~20Hz port tune they were amazingly ‘fast’, even more so than my own in fact, which I thought were pretty good in that respect. I can only imagine just how good the latest PSA TV range of subs are given all the excellent feedback from owners and the fact they have a port tune in the low teens, which in turn gives a predicted room response down into the single figures. They seem to combine the best of both ported and sealed and I can’t wait to hear them at Ricky’s when the opportunity arises.
So, what about the room, given the complexity of the build? Well the thing I first commented on to Tony as we chatted initially was that his room didn’t seem to be like some purpose-built cinemas I have experienced, it felt completely natural. Some I have visited have felt quite unnatural, not because of the complete absence of any outside sound, but more a feeling of having cotton wool in your ears due to too much damping and not enough diffusion. For me personally I feel that sucks any life out of the sound.
Tony’s room was completely silent other than for a very slight fan noise that could only be heard slightly when everything else was silent. That sound was not from the projector itself, which I originally suspected, but from the cooling fan to the hush box. Given the short distance from projector to screen and the fully light-controlled nature of the room Tony only has to use the eco mode setting of his LS10000. In fact when he turned off the cooling fan I had to walk up to the opening of the hush box to be able to hear anything such was the effectiveness of it.
The RT60 graph of his room showed excellent control remaining below 200ms all the way to 80Hz other than for a slight peak around 125Hz that even then never went beyond 400ms.
The RT60 decay graph was also very good showing excellent control down to 125Hz, I would love to have similar results in my room.
The Group Delay graph clearly shows the effect of the sub’s port tune around 22Hz.
One interesting point I also noted that initially puzzled me was an apparent echo almost equal in amplitude to the original signal at 3.8ms that was present on some measurements but not on others.
It then dawned on me about those flat-topped footstalls immediately in front of the MLP. For some sweeps they had nothing on them, but for others they had coffee cups, biscuits, sandwiches etc. that must have broken up those reflections. So when watching films just make sure that either your feet are on them or some refreshments or similar in order to break up those unwanted reflections. Whether or not this would actually be audible however is open to debate of course.
So, there we have it. I found it really useful to be given the opportunity of measuring a room that whilst similar in size to mine, was completely different in both layout and construction.
May I take this opportunity to pass on a big thank you to both Tony & wife Maggie (with her lovely bacon and fried egg sandwiches) for their excellent hospitality shown to me today, I wish you many hours of happy cinema.
Jon