Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners I still have the itch

Yep, I still have it - the itch, that is. I stay away from the forum and web site until I just have to scratch again.......still saving and getting closer (although it is getting tougher these days). So I have been catching up for the past week or so.......one question that I have is about acoustics in the room where I will set up the HT (Epic 60-500). The room is a bonus room over the garage (I did a similar post a while back) - the room is about 18 feet wide and 25 feet long with 8 foot ceilings. The twist is the Knee Wall (that is what we call it down here) - it goes straight up to about 4 feet and then angles in somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees up to the ceiling. Any experience or speculation on a room with those dimensions?..........Rob

A friend of mine has his HT in room like you describe, The audio in his room sounds good to me.

Sounds exactly like my room. Check the pics in my signature. Everyone I talked to recommended putting the screen and mains on the short wall. While it sounds very good that way, the location of the screen is entirely too low. The location of the door and media closet in my room makes turning the room around impossible, but if I didn't have those limitations, I'd probably turn the room around. (Note though that if you do it this way, there's no way to get two rows of seats in the room as you can't elevate the back row when the ceiling slopes down to 4' in the back of the room. (in my room it goes up to 5.5', but it's still too low)

Jason

I wonder how much it would cost to do some seriouse carpentry renovation and extend the wall up. I wonder how much structural support that angled timber is providing too... hmmmmm.

Even if the carpentry fix was doable, I'd have an interesting argument with my wife about blowing up the roofline and raising the ceiling in that room!

As hard as it is to decide whether it's explosions or dogs that are a man's best friend, exploding dogs aren't a very common result.

Honestly, an argument with my wife about altering the roofline to accomodate a screen would be a slaughter - my slaughter that is. I already have a 52" LCD that will be the "screen" part and I have a hodgepodge surround systme in there now. The acoustics seem good to me but the only thing I have for bass is an ancient M&K dual 8" push-pull "subwoofer". I keep telling my wife that we have never heard "bass" - she just points at the lonely little M&K and gives me that look like I am crazy.......Rob

I have 45 degree angled wall/ceiling in my HT room as well. I'm running with screen and speakers on the short (vertical) wall but always thought it would be neat to put the screen on the angled wall (angled down) and have reclining chairs so you could lie back and look *up* at the screen.

Mounting M60s up there would be a challenge but not impossible.

If you go with speakers & screen on the short wall do think about some kind of acoustic treatment on the angled walls. I haven't done that yet but really need to - the imaging is *not* good although most other aspects of the sound seem fine.

Very early shot (before the projector)

And...

Doesn't look like there is enough room for a screen but a 4x8 screen fits just fine. The problem is that the angled walls are pretty close to the speakers so wall treatments seem like they could really make a difference.

Sort of a "Appollo 13" viewing experince? We have a door on one of the short ends and windows on the other. The viewing area is sort of in the middle with the seating backed up to one knee wall and the TV backed up to the other. Because it is over the garage and connected to the rest of the house by a short hallway, it is sort of isolated as far as sound. Not completely isolated but enough that moderate volume levels do not disrupt the rest of the house if the door is closed. The QS8s will have to be on stands on either side of the couch - I am considering pulling the couch out from the wall a bit in order to put the surrounds slightly behind the listening position. As usual, I am overplanning and thinking way too much......

If you have enough width for the setup you described (and I guess the 4' knee walls help, mine are about a foot) then I think that would work well. The biggest thing to watch out for might be standing waves in the low freqs if your angled walls really are at 45 degrees -- anything other than 45 would be better IIRC.

Almost everyone here over-plans -- one of the most important roles of the forum members is to act as "enablers" for your over-planning