New Home Cinema setup

[Slamjam99]

As part of our house renovations, I am building a dedicated Home Cinema in our converted attic space.

We have soundproofed the walls, ceilings & floor with metal furring strips, double boarded with vinyl between, and green glue/silicone the joints. Also using sound mats on the floor under the carpet.

The floor plan is below: (Not to scale)

Room: The pillars to the left (3x) & right (1x) are only 1.36m in height, as the sloping ceiling. The 2x pillars which will have the side speakers on (Red dots) will have to be about 50cm high due to this, with the seat height of 46cm. The rear 2x pillars are full ceiling height and so the speaker can be a little higher.

Projector Screen: We have installed an Elite Screens VMAX 16:9 100" screen (As this was the largest screen we could fit with the sloping ceilings) (Screen: H: 1.45m - W: 2.4m - leaving 30cm under the screen to the floor). Gain: 1:1.

Speakers: It's been suggested we look at Monitor Audio Silver, for our: 7.2.4 Atmos setup: (Red dots on the floor plan for speaker & orange dots for subs)
-Center: C250
-R/L: 500's
-Middle & Read R/L: 4x FX or 4x CP-WT260 (in-wall to save space)
-Sub: W12 x2
-Ceiling Atmos: CP-CT380 x4

AMP: NAD T778 AV Reciever - has been quoted for however I do like the Denon AMPs such as x6500 (However we have other rooms with pairs of speakers and have been quoted NAD C1720 V2 Stereo AMPs to control these (Pairs of: CP-CT260 (Small room pairs), CP-CT380IDC (More powerful pair for larger room), AWC 280 (Outside pair)) which should work well with the NAD T778).

Projector: Looking at: Sony VPL-VW590ES - for true 4K (Ceiling mounted)

Media players: Nvidia Shield Pro, Xbox Series X, Playstation 5

Server rack: We have a dedicated server room that will house the rack and all of the equipment. It's about 15m away from the cinema room and so the longest speaker cable is about 20m (12AWG), we also run fiber HDMI cables back to the server room.

Content: Most of our content is: 4k 3840x2160 HDR Main 10 (HEVC 30fps ) 5.1 or 7.1 audio.

Seating: Would like to fit in 2x rows however the room will only really be used by 2x adults and 2x children. So looking at 2x recliner seats and 2x bean bags seats in front of the recliners.

Questions:
-Is this a decent setup without getting silly?
-Are the speaker too powerful for our room? Does that matter? Can we just turn them down if required?
-Is the receiver powerful enough to drive the speakers? Does it need a pre-amp for the number of speakers? How are the AMPs controlled?
-Is there any way to improve this setup? What do you suggest?
-Will we get the benefit out of the projector?
-Anything wrong or can be improved?
-Can the projector be improved by: Lumagen Radiance Pro or MadVR PC or Envy or HDFury Vertex? Are these worth the extra?
-What do you recommend for the seating distance from the screen?
-Anything I have missed?

 

[AmericanAudio]

Firstly, It is a great combination of kit, I have used Monitor Audio kit as our go-to installer product of years and love it. If you have never had anything like this, you will be amazed by it.

But we need to split out your questioning and systems to Cinema Room and Multi-room Audio. Trying to pair the two becomes a challenge to understand, configure and control.

So, Cinema.
I would maybe not consider sticking to a matching manufacturers sub, they are typically not as good as a dedicated manufacturer and don't traditionally need to be matched sonically as they operate at different frequencies.

The speakers should be fine, as long as the amp can provide the right level of power to them (which the NAD will) it is better to be a little to powerful for the room with a system, then you can stay well within the ideal operational range (peak performance) of your equipment.

If you can, I would pull your sides forward as far as possible, building out to the level of the left / right pillars if you can, so the sound isn't blocked for anyone listening at the rear. Where they are at the moment would sound like the sides would be coming from further behind instead of to the left or right of you.

The Atmos's are a little over spec'ed, 8" good, quality maybe overkill. They are less important to timbre match to the 7 low level speakers and ideally you should try to focus them at the main listening point (seating) of the room. These are the only speakers where you want accurate, focused, directional sound. So directional tweeters good, directional whole drivers better.

Sony projectors are amazing, IMO very natural and great with 4K sources, I have had one since 4K launch-ish and the up-scaling is good, but I can tell a difference between 1080 & 4K if I look for it (I dont, I just enjoy it). Whilst a external processor would improve the image, it would be better to spend your money on getting the image (and sound) professionally calibrated.

 

[AmericanAudio]

Multi-Room Audio.

This is a completely different beast. But actually with the Amp you have has all that you need if want to stream music to the different zones. Complete independence between zones for what you listen to and volume, all built into the excellent BluOS app. I love it and use it for our demo systems.

I would say you may need to look at your speaker spec of the other rooms, you can mix and match depending on the listening requirements and possible volume levels you need. ie Kids don't need the quality of a top end speaker, living room may do if you actually sit and listen to music. Kitchens traditionally don't need high end speakers, but may be larger (8") because the hard surfaces will destroy sound quality.

 

[AmericanAudio]

Missed out the Control side.

If you have been spec'ed a system I am surprised this has been missed out.

Last year the DIY solution would have been Harmony Remotes from Logitech, but they stopped making (still supporting) last year.

So really there isn't much in the DIY sphere at all. As installers we would look at the likes of ProControl, URC, RTI and Control4. But they are all installer supplied / programmed systems, but some maybe possible to program, ship out and then remote support.