Naturephoto1's Preliminary Home Theater Set-up

[naturephoto1]

We have gone round and round about my set-up for my new listening room/home theater that is going into the new house that I close on on November 24. The listening room/home theater has to be modified because with the present construction there is a closet that intrudes into the room from the left corner entry into the room from the Kitchen and the wall is partially open. The closet will be removed and the air ducts that run into the closet will have to be removed and shifted along the wall to between where one of the main towers will sit and the Center Channel will sit. Additionally, the room will be closed off and a door will be installed to open out and to the left.

In order for the best sound to be produced in this 19'4"L X 14'7"W X9' H we are now considering the basic layout in the following sketch diagram:



At this point I am struggling to fit in the CD storage, but we will deal with that. At least for a short time and until the screen and projector are installed my 50" Pioneer Elite Plasma TV will be in the room on a rolling cart.

I intend to get the following cart for the Plasma Screen TV:



The screen (expected to be about 105 or 110" electric drop down) will be placed on the wall above the Center Channel speaker.

We are debating at this point putting side surrounds on the wall facing the seating. At this point I do not know how the tower speakers in the back of the room will be facing.

The main tower speakers are a mirror imaged pair consisting of 32 drivers each (each with 16 woofers, 8 soft dome tweeters, and 8 soft dome mdirange drivers). The speakers which will be Automotive/Piano Black stand a little over 6' tall, are about 26" wide and 30" wide at the base. The Center Channel speaker that we have just started preparation on is basically a half tower set-up as one side of the mirrored pair. The cabinet is being built deeper without a base so that the speaker can be rotated from the vertical to horizontal orientation to find out which sounds better (the diagram shows the speaker in the horizontal orientation). The remaining 2 or 4 speakers (depending on whether I do a full 7.1 or 5.1 surround system) will still be built in the future. The rear of these will be a Tower designed on a smaller scale than the front mains, that is they will be at ear height with only 12 drivers per mirrored speaker.

Presently I have 1 Epik Conquest 18" subwoofer. I will start with that and add a 2nd. These will be placed on the front walls between the main towers and the corners.

As to the equipment, here is the at present main rack:



First off, the Plasma Screen TV will be removed from the rack. Two of my upgraded Aragon Palladium 1K monoblock amps like those below will be placed on the top shelf (the photo is not of my amps):



The second level of the rack system above will have the upgraded Denon 5910 and the upgraded Onkyo 885 reversed in the photo of the main rack shown above. Additionally the upgraded Lavry DA10 DAC seen on the top shelf will be moved to the second level.

The third level of the rack system shown above will be as in the picture with the upgraded Denon 3800 Blu-ray player remaining in the same spot and my modified Sansui TU-9900 AM/FM tuner will occupy the blank space in the rack as it actually does at present. If I am able to find an Audio Research LS10 Preamp and then upgrade it, it will be placed in the spot where the modified Sansuii TU-9900 sits.

In the present photo of the rack system, an upgraded Exact Power EP15A is on a platform on the left and an Isotek Sigmas is on the right. The Exact Power EP15A will be placed in one of these 2 spots and the Isotek Sigmas will be removed from this location; the DirecTV HD tuner will be placed here.

A 60" tall black Adona rack (same maker as the main rack and my Turntable rack) will be made up for 5 levels with space underneath to slide a second upgraded Exact Power EP15A.



This will be an amp rack with to start with 2 of the upgraded Aragon Palladium 1K monoblock amps (I am looking for 1 more to bring the total to 5 Aragon Palladium 1K monoblock amps) and the upgraded Krell KAV-250a/3 power amp. As mentioned one of the upgraded Exact Power EP15A power conditioners will be placed on a platform and slid under the rack. A special power transformer unit that is to be built by Dave Schulte will be on the bottom shelf of this rack sitting below the amps and above the Exact Power EP15A. All 3 of the Power conditioners (the 2 upgraded Exact Power EP15A and Isotek Sigmas) will plug into this unit.

My turntable system consisting of the Teres Certus 450, Teres Illius Tonearm, Soundsmith Strain Gauge Cartridge, and Soundsmith Strain Gauge 410 Phono Preamp will be as shown in the picture below (but the VPI 16.5 record cleaner will be removed). However, an additional shelf will be added at the bottom of the rack and the Isotek Sigmas will be placed there.



As to the seating, since the beginning I have tried to fit in 2 rows of seats consisting of rows of 3 or a row of 3 and a row of 2. With the presently planned arrangement, I will have a single row of 5 seats, so though I had been hoping for really 5 seats in 2 rows, I will now have 5 in 1 row.

Rich