The Frey Theater - DIY, but better every month

I have been slowly working on my home theater project over the last 3 years. The small ranch house I bought had a large, L-shaped finished room in the basement, and although it wasn't professionally finished and only has a 6 1/2 foot drop ceiling, it did have a nice 14 x 25 foot area I was able to convert into a fairly nice theater room area.  I have constructed the entire theater myself, a good DIY project which I'm sure will keep me busy for many more years to come. Gotta love those eternal upgrades...!

I host regular monthly movie nights for friends and relatives, and usually have a good size crowd of 7 or 8 people at my showings. Everyone brings a snack or some drinks, while I provide free beer on tap, popcorn, and the movie.  I also host a theater website www.freytheater.com to post the upcoming movies so everyone knows what movie is playing and what night it is scheduled. There are about 10 pages of photos and information about the theater room and lobby, the A/V equipment, and construction projects on the website, which unfortunately I now need to upgrade with some of the new photos I just took below!

I recently made some major upgrades to my theater in the last month or so - I purchased a new Optoma HD20 1080p projector and an Oppo BDP-83 BD player, which finally gives me full 1080p HD projection capabilities with Blu Ray disks.   I also just installed 3 new Clark transducers under the seats of the recliner sofa in my front row seating - some very powerful "butt shakers" that enable the viewer to really FEEL the movies they are watching.  Everyone is totally loving the awesome sensory experience they provide!

Here are some photos of my theater as it is setup currently:



The front stage and 120" screen in the Frey Theater, along with my Vintage
Cerwin Vega 380 SE front mains and a Premier Acoustic PA-8 center channel.



The 120" screen is motorized and controlled by an RF remote; when it is retracted, three framed movie posters are visible on the flat black wall:  Star Wars 3, Spiderman 3, and Pirates 3...



An additional movie poster frame is mounted on the side wall...



My front seating includes a recliner sofa with a foot stool and some tray tables.I bought the sofa used for only $75, and the wooden stool and tray tables I found at a yard sale for free!



The Sofa is shown here with the end seats reclined. The center seat is fixed and does not recline, thus the need for a foot stool...



These Clark transducers, a.k.a. "Butt Shakers" are mounted under all three of the sofa seats. 



A close-up view of one of the Clark transducers, each of which can produce up to 218 pounds of force.





The rear of the theater room, with a back-lighted movie poster box with marquee race lights, my rear speakers and subwoofer, one of my DVD racks, and my Audio/Video Cabinet.



My new Optoma HD20 1080p DLP projector, mounted through the drop ceiling.




The rear of the projector, showing the HDMI and power cables, and an inexpensive 
$30 eBay-purchased projector mount.




My A/V rack cabinet which I constructed myself, with wider and deeper shelves than most retail cabinets to accomodate the larger rack mount pieces I have, and to allow for better cooling.



From top: Pioneer Elite DV-46AV all-region DVD player with hardware PAL converter, Oppo BDP-83 Blu Ray player, Rane SM-26 mixer configured as a 6-channel line attenuator, and Parasound 7100 surround processor.



A Carver AV705 5 channel amp powers the Center channel speaker, the two Rear speakers, and the 3 Clark transducers in the sofa; the two Carver M-500t Amps are both wired in bridged-mono mode, one amp driving each of the two Front Main speakers.




Rear speakers feature a pair of Infinity SM-152 speakers with 15" drivers, and
a custom-built Nuonic ATAK Class 15" 1000 watt powered subwoofer.



This Nuonic Subwoofer is a prototype the company custom- built specifically for my theater - a one-of-a-kind subwoofer they never put into production because it would have been too costly for them to construct by hand.  Gotta love that serial plate on this sub!




I thought this was a humorous but appropriate theater addition to hang on my wall, to warn movie-goers of their impending confrontation with a nearly 4000 watt sound system and the suprise "seat shakers" hidden in the sofa...! 

Below, this was originally a photo of the State Theater marquee in Ann Arbor Michigan, but I photoshopped it quite a bit, changing the letters STATE to FREY to reflect my own movie theater - note that this is NOT a photo of the front of my house, LOL!

Edited by FreyTheater - 9/18/09 at 1:04pm

Great looking theater.  That's also a very nice sub.  The Parts Express amp and 15" Reference driver is a proven combination.  Looking at the size of the enclosure they probably use the high output sub since it works better in small enclosures.  Have you worked with the parametric EQ that is built into the amp?

-Robert

Ah, very good eye with the sub driver and amp - yes, it IS the Dayton 800/1400w 4 ohm reference driver and the  Dayton 1000w amp... they are an awesome pair together.  The amp has a huge toroidal transformer in it, and the cabinet is tremendously constructed as well - 2" thick walls,  two completely isolated chambers for the driver and the amp, veneer hand-picked by the product designer for an optimum grain pattern, and piano-finished top and bottom panels with 32 coats of hand-rubbed lacquer... this sub weighs a whopping 130 pounds.  The production models they finally released are still very excellent subs, but use only a 12" driver and have a lighter, thinner-walled cabinet with no lacquer top or bottom panels, and weigh only 75 pounds - they said they would have needed to sell the sub as they built it for me for about $2500, just to break even... 
Edited by FreyTheater - 9/11/09 at 4:15am

As a DIY sub builder, I can appreciate the time and effort that goes into a properly constructed cabinet.  If you want to see another excellent custom sub, check out this one - http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/281523/the-lms-project

-Robert

Wow, I really NEED one of those... but make it under $2000, please...!    

A friend just gave me a Crown Powerbase 1 Pro-Audio amp to use to drive the 3 Clark transducers mounted in my theater sofa...  If I hook the three 4-ohm transducers up in series, and set the amp to bridged-mono mode, it will output about 425 watts into a 12 ohm load, and I can use just one run of speaker wire to the sofa, instead of 3... each transducer is rated at 100w rms 350w max, so I'll have to be a little careful with the output power level on the amp, maybe put a fuse in the line to protect them, but they should really make the sofa rock now -  650 total pounds of force shaking the sofa should be somewhat noticable... 

I'm hosting my first regularly scheduled Monthly Movie Night of the 2009-2010 theater season tomorrow night, so I've got to get the amp installed and tested out tonight yet... this will put my total power output for the sound system at about 3800 watts - so much for our hearing!  

I'd just adjust the attenuator of the amp so that you don't go over 350w.  You can find that with digital multi-meter and a 60hz test tone.

One thing.  Bragging about the wattage is like bragging on how much gas your car burns during a race when the goal is to be the fastest.  More useful stats would be the frequency response from 20hz to 20,000hz and how much deviation you have.  Or maybe your max SPL at 20hz.  We aren't really about how loud a room is but how realistic it sounds.

-Robert

Yes, the Crown Amp does have attenuators on the rear panel for each channel, adjusting them was the plan, along with perhaps an inline fuse to protect agains any unexpected major spikes of power...

And no, I was not "bragging" about watts in my system, I was only giving the wattages of the amp and transducers to relate how the wiring and resulting power distribution will end up with them.  I know wattage is an indiscriminate value, and doesn't mean much for any accurate measurments, its just used relatively in my posts.  The only place I would consider me to perhaps be bragging about the wattage is in the caption of the photo of the vibration warning sign, and that was done on purpose because its a humorous sign and bragging about it is the whole point of having the sign in the theater... geez.

I can see that on the sign for the humor value.  But we have a LOT of people who are new to home theater who come here to find real information.  Some have come over from car audio where wattage is king (even though it isn't) and that's what they focus on.  We try to give them real advice and dispel and audio myths that won't die.

OK, in this case then, I guess the "real information" is that I have big speakers and they are real loud... and probably sound like total crap to a stuffy audiophile perfectionist...   




... um, that was supposed to be humor, again...

Even if I had the money to be a stuffy audiophile, I'd still build my own speakers because that's what I like to do.

Actually, efficient speakers play with less distortion so there is an advantage to using large, 'loud' speakers.

Yes, I would like to do some speaker building or modification myself - I was even thinking about playing around with modding those CVs on my front mains... they are old speakers, but they are efficient.. I was thinking about possibly bi-amping the speakers (remotely from amps in the AV cabinet), separating the main 15" drivers from the mids and tweeter on the crossover,  maybe even changing out the driver to something that would work even better in the lower frequencies as additional subs, and reworking the crossovers to compensate in the midrange... if it sounds good, ok, and if it doesn't, I can always put everything back the way it was. These are ported cabinets, so cabinet volume is not quite as critical matching up a sub driver as it would be if it was a sealed cabinet...  I'd just like some additional sub frequencies coming from the front of the theater.  I can definitely use more low end in the room than I'm getting from just the one sub in the rear - since the room is L-shaped and a large volume, it does take away some of the existing sub's "oomph"...

I have thought about walling off the theater area for a smaller room volume, but then it would really isolate the lobby snack area and restroom, and I 'd have to rearrange all my computer network racks and tables...