Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater My 3.1 HT setup with front projector

Hi folks,

I thought I'd share my WAF-friendly HT/music setup, along with a picture.



The living/dining room is 23ft long, 13ft wide and 9ft high. On the near side is the dining area, and on the far side of the divider is the living room. To the left is a large entrance/staircase area, and the picture was taken from a doorway to the kitchen/family room area. Yes, that's our Christmas tree to the right. Not shown: we have blinds for the entrance/staircase area windows for light control if we watch when it's bright out.

Equipment:
M3Ti, right at the top L & R corners of the room
VP100 in front of the screen
HSU TN-1220HO hidden behind the armoire
HSU 500W power supply under armoire
Rane PE-15 parametric equalizer under armoire
5-disk DVD player, receiver (low-end Panasonic)
Panasonic AE900U front projector (using S-video input)
DaLite InstaTheater 80" portable screen
(The HSU w/power supply and Rane were bought used, for $600 and $100 respectively. )

Obviously the setup is very much designed for WAF. When we're not watching a movie, the projector and screen are put away, and the VP100 is put out of sight (and turned off in the receiver). Partly from the room geometry, partly from the speaker placement, I get resonance peaks and valleys that are measurably pretty bad at the low end, and I think that the corner placement of the M3Ti results in some coloring of the sound even in the mid range. I don't think that being behind the armoire makes the TN-1220HO any worse than just the fact that it's in the corner. With the Rane PE-15, I was able to reduce the low frequency peaks enough to crank up the low-end bass for some flat punch without too much single-note boom. The higher frequency coloring goes away when, um, the speakers "break in", yeah, that's it, it's the speakers that break in.

So while there are measurable problems in the audio, overall the sound is enjoyable both for HT and for full-range music of any genre.

Notice that there's no surround speakers. We found that just adding the center speaker made a huge, huge difference in the enjoyment of movies. It broadened the usable viewing range by fixing the dialog to the screen, and so any L/R audio effects are heard from all locations. I don't know if we'll ever get surrounds, mostly because I'm too lazy to install them permanently with sufficiently invisible wiring, and it would double the nuisance factor in setup if the surrounds were portable instead.

The projector placement (right above the head when sitting on the sofa) is a bit of a compromise. It's a pretty quiet projector, but you can hear the fan when your head is 1 ft away AND it's a quiet scene. So when it's quiet I slouch down to avoid the fan sound. The picture is fantastic. If I ever get a better DVD (maybe when HD-DVD comes) I'll get a better cable, but I think that S-video is good enough. Incidentally, we used to have an Optoma H-31 that we returned to Costco when the S-video input failed, and upgraded with the AE900U. Way better: better color, brighter, better contrast, way better balance when both dark & bright are on screen. The H-31 had "screen door effect" even thought it was DLP, but you have to get 3 ft from the screen to notice anything but smoothness on the AE900U. No rainbow effect either, which was a bit annoying in some types of images. The AE900U image isn't fuzzy however, as evidenced by the clear captions. (I'm very picky about picture artifacts.) The AE900U is higher resolution too (720p vs 480p) and maybe it ends up smoothing the 480-line DVD signal.

I have no idea if the piano in the room makes any difference to the sound, except when I'm listening to music and my son decides to come and practice on the piano.

What would I upgrade? I can't help suspecting that the el-cheapo DVD with S-video is the weakest link in the video, so when HD video comes I'll consider upgrading. Maybe I'll try component inputs just for kicks, since a big screen does make noise and smearing more visible. On the audio side, I don't think there's much point replacing anything while the room and the speaker placements are so contraining. Maybe more PE-15 tweaking, no more.

Thanks for visiting our entertainment room!

--Martin