So.... I decided to move my false wall 13.5" closer to the seating area. That meant full tear down of the frame work, moving it, cutting existing crown molding that was in place, disconnecting a LOT of wiring for the led light strips in the crown molding (half of the wiring was attached to the frame work of the false wall to get to the other side and to use the least amount of wiring at the time.

Why would someone do this you might ask? Well, there was a primary goal, but at least two other benefits as well.

First up is my primary left and right channel speakers were really too narrow up front. They were right at the outer edge of my screen area because, well, it seemed to make sense at the time. What I am finding out after talking to a number of industry experts is that it is totally OK to put the front left and right speakers outside of the screen area, just like if it wasn't an AT screen... My problem was that in order to do that, which would give me a much wider soundstage, I would have to move the wall as my M60s were already as wide as they could go due to the corner bass traps up front. The bass traps went to within a couple of inches of the back of the false wall.

So here is the backer board on the one wall that the right black panel rests against compared to the main framing that holds the screen that has not been relocated yet. 13.5" further forward:


Why 13.5" you ask? Well, really I could pick any number, but this allowed me to position the M60s where I wanted to, giving them just a touch of breathing room, but without going any further than I needed to.

The old setup looked like this. Everything crammed behind the 138" screen.


And here is what I could do with moving the wall forward more:


The room gets a little cramped when you have to store the screen somewhere, plus all of the black panels... Oh, the left panel is physically attached to my fresh air system that I installed just a little while back, so it was a bit trickier to move.


And fast forward a couple of hours and I started putting things back together. You can see how much more room there is to spread things out a bit. There were other audio benefits in doing this as well that I will touch on later.


And here is what the front wall looked like BEFORE the project:


And here is AFTER moving it 13.5":


It doesn't look a whole lot different in the pictures, but you can see that there is less space between the wall and the acoustical panels. I actually don't have to move these at all because they still get first reflection points due to the speakers moving closer to the wall while also moving forward.

So then I put all of the various tools away (I used a lot of different tools, but thought that the Sawzall might make people wonder. I used that with a fine cut blade to cut the crown molding that was up on the soffit.

And of course I ran an Audyssey calibration too.

So what benefits did I get?

1) The soundstage is obviously wider, and it makes the audio sound much smoother when objects pan left and right, but most importantly, when they go from the front speakers to the side surrounds. That was a primary goal in preparation for Atmos and DTS:X at some point. I want to reduce that audio "gap" as much as possible.
2) The bass is a little smoother throughout the room. I think that this is because I could slightly move the subwoofers away from each other.
3) Dialog is actually less muddled, not that I noticed it as muddled at all before, but I do notice that it is a bit clearer. Could be that the left and right speakers are further away, or it could be something with the Audyssey calibration.
4) The screen provides a noticeably larger image. It went from "big" before, to "IMAX like" (but widescreen LOL). Maybe not "science center/zoo documentary IMAX" but movie theater IMAX.
5) The screen image has more POP now that it is closer to the projector. As good as it is, I was really kind of just past the limit of what the JVC can do with an effectively matte white AT screen, and now it has a lot more pop, and much better black level detail.


There is at least 1 downfall. I planned to move my seats forward about a foot to make space behind the rear row of seats for Atmos speakers overhead. As it currently sits, the back of the 2nd row of seats lines up with the front of the soffit on the rear wall. I want to put the ceiling speakers slightly behind the 2nd row, and thus I wanted to bump all of the seats forward, but I really don't think that would be a good idea. I am already probably impacting the 2nd row of people from being able to see the bottom of movies due to 1st row seats/heads. Plus my wife will say that the screen is too big (it does have a "really big" feel to it now). So I will probably leave the seats where they are, and just focus on Atmos speaker placement being good for the front row (which gets used the most anyway) and good, but not great overhead effects for the 2nd row.

So tomorrow I am thinking about widening my rear surrounds and putting them on a slight angle. I will have to fabricate some sort of angled shim or something and run some speaker wire extensions. I might mess with the side surrounds too, but that just depends on when my family gets home from the various things that they are doing out of town tonight and tomorrow.

I am also going to see about ordering some more fabric for 2 more acoustical panels and some to (finally) cover my star ceiling. I want it to look cool when the lights are on too. I have a 4 day weekend coming up in a week, so I will have some time to play around with more of this as well.


Farewell - June 4, 2020