Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Yippe, I'm gonna do the basement in January

Well, I have read a lot of posts, asked a lot of silly and not so silly questions and asked my buddy Bridgman a ton of questions.

Here's what I have proposed to do.

Sony 60" Wega (XBR2); Axiom m60s with 150 centres, 500 woofer and Q8s. I think I will go with the Sherwood Newcastle R771 Receiver and the new oppo 981 DVD player.....what did I miss.

My basement is typical for a 2700 sq ft home with the TV on a finished wall of 12.5 to 13 feet and about 30 feet long (bar on the other end)....fussball table in the middle. I will have 2 walls perpendicular to TV wall at least 13.5 feet long (the one wall goes back to the bar.

P.S. do you like my pic?

Sounds good to me! Are you doing any construction/soundproofing?

yes, the ceiling and walls will be insulated for warmth and sound proofing, other than than I may put up a wall dampener, as I here it adds to the acoustics.

Right now I looking for advice I havn't thought of yet and comments on whether my chioces are off the wall.

Thanks

Oh yes, one other thought. If my basement will be ready to install the speakers and TV etc by mid to end of Feb., when should I order the speakers? Does the cost of my proposed system go up or down or level in the next 2 months?

Are you doing the work yourself, or hiring it out? That will hae the biggest impact on when things will actually be done...

Congrats Chips! My wife and I purchased a new house back in May and I've been remodeling my basement and transforming it into my new theater for the past few months. I should have it all done within the next week, or no later then the week of Christmas.

The prewiring is done, soundproofing is done, drywall is up, and the bar is darn near completion. It's alot of hard work, but a lot of fun as well. Well, that is if you enjoy doing such type of work, which I do.

Keep us posted on how everything goes and if you have any questions, there's a lot of great guys here who would be glad to answer them.

Well, my basement is DONE! and thanks to Bridgman My Axioms are all wired up.

They sound great of course. Tried Star Wars III for sound testing etc. WOW!

One minor problem, My EP500s rattle a bit at heavy woofer frequencies. Bridgman thinks it's a loose port.

I'll send a pic in a few days when I do my final touch ups. But my system is as in sig below

The system does look and sound mighty fine. The EP500 rattle is only at high volumes and goes away when I stuff my hand in the port, so should be easy to fix.

During the first "performance" I got into a debate with one of Mark's friends regarding the ability to localize the subwoofer (it's off to one side). I mentioned that we could lower the crossover frequencies if there was a problem then realized his point was that the subwoofer was moving so much air he could feel his clothes blowing around from several feet away

We also ran into a problem with the Oppo 981 hanging up on Mark's copy of Star Wars III. No problem with my copy.

either have I.

I should mention a couple of other things :

1. Mark went with a Sherwood 771 receiver from Axiom. First impressions were very positive. It manages to combine a full set of options with a nice simple UI, so getting Mark's system up and running took essentially zero time once all the wires were stripped and hooked up. The remote doesn't suck too badly, which makes it fairly good in the grand scheme of things.

2. Between the Sony TV, Oppo player and Sherwood receiver Mark has the most aesthetically un-coordinated set of remote controls I have ever seen. Ug-ly !! Fortunately all of the remotes have buttons for all of the other devices as well, so we should be able to get one of them programmed up to do all the work so we can hide the other two.

Alternatively, as I told Mark "you can deal with the heartache of having three ugly complicated remotes by purchasing a fourth, even MORE complicated remote to replace the three you have"

Wait, a receiver with an easy to use UI? Where do I sign up? Anyone want to buy a slightly used H/K 525?

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hang onto your HK for a bit though -- I didn't try to do anything fancy with the Sherwood and the HK's UI quirks don't really surface until you get past the basics.

Still, it was a refreshing change, particularly since the last system I set up was built around a Denon 380x.

I have pics now.....but now I have to figure out how to post them here.

John did a wonderful job, can't wait till he comes over again to help me work my controls

Is it too loud again ? Turn the big knob on the right counter clockwise

EDIT -- Mark took a couple of pics of the new basement :





The Mansfield Beech looks good with the wall colours. I'm thinking a couple of 12" risers under the M60s would be good.

The only complaint I have so far is the bookshelves on the right. The shelves and speakers were positioned at the first reflection point so that the contents of the shelves would help to tame reflections -- imagine my surprise when I showed up and found GLASS DOORS on the shelves.

Glass doors -- at the first reflection point. The horror.

My....what a beautiful basement set up Thanks John for the help. I believe the 2 jedi's are saying "I bet I can kick your ass in fussball"!

Actually it looks like they just heard the furnace starting up. Jedis call it "sensing a disturbance in the force".

For anyone not familiar with Mark's basement, the furnace room is behind the wall on the left side of the room.