Advice for screen and speakers for Samsung Projector? (1 Viewer)

[FFMichael]

Hello! I'm new here, and also new to Home Theaters in general.

My wife and I are buying our first house and there is a room in the basement that we want to turn into a home theater. We already own a Samsung 120" Premier (LSP7T) UST Projector. At the place we have been renting, the white wall has been good enough for this projector, but now we want to have the best experience possible.

The room will be completely dark, so is a screen better or would painting the wall gray be better? If a screen is better, what would be a good recommendation?

Additionally, we'd love some suggestions on the best speaker set up. Our room will have carpet flooring and normal drywall walls and ceiling (painted very dark blue), unless you guys highly recommend otherwise. The size/shape of the room is 11' by 20' with the seating and projector being the longer distance apart if that affects what speakers you recommend.

Between the speakers and screen, we'd like to stay around $2500 max (but don't let that dissuade you from telling me if the "perfect" setup is $3000). We don't mind saving up longer for a big increase in quality. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Hi, Mike. Welcome to HTF.

I'm not very familiar w/ UST PJs myself, and there seems to be conflicting info about whether they really need (or benefit much from) specific screens designed/marketed for them. But if you've been happy w/ just white wall in a fairly regular space in the past and given your stated budget/desires, I'd suggest just going w/out a screen for now and add one later, if you really want. The $$$ would likely be better spent on other aspects of your dedicated HT space in that case -- if you do notice or become bothered by wall texture, off-white tint/bias and such, then I'd suggest going w/ a modestly priced screen like Silver Ticket (for under $300).

For wall color, I'd suggest going w/ some kinda (least reflective) dark gray or matte black at least near/around the projection area. (Dark) Blue will bias reflected light, including stray light coming from the PJ. IF not using screen at all, you'll probably want to paint the projection target white (or very light gray) w/ surrounding area dark gray or matte black. Given that, you might actually find going w/ a modestly priced screen w/ entire wall painted the same preferable, especially if you aren't sure about placement or might well alter that at some point.

Assuming you can spend (just about) all of your stated budget on audio, you could probably go w/ a decent, lower-end AVR (that doesn't allow much, if any, expansion like a well-discounted and/or "open box"/refurbed Denon S970H that probably runs $400-500 on good sale) + ELAC UniFi 2.0 for front speakers + some combo of their Debut 2.0 bookselves and/or wall-mountables for surrounds (but wait for a frequently recurring sale so that you can get them at 20-30% off MSRP) + SVS SB-3000 for subwoofer ($1100). Make sure to allocate some $ for good speaker stands for best results (away from walls and other sizeable, reflective objects/surfaces as much as feasible) -- probably can't go w/ floorstanding UniFi 2.0 w/ your budget. But you'll have to wait for a good sale on the AVR and speakers (as I don't see any right now despite the Memorial Day weekend... other than AVR refurbs from Accessories4Less), except the SVS subwoofer, which doesn't ever get discounted that much. IF you can't wait, it'll be much tougher me thinks... and unfortunately, summer's probably not a great time for sales although maybe there could be a good sale for/around July 4th week.

There are few other (similar enough) options, of course, but that's probably how I'd go more or less...

And don't overspend on cabling. Just some inexpensive 14AWG Monoprice and maybe DIY banana plugs will do for speaker wires or maybe something like this if you really want them already terminated for you -- do similarly for the subwoofer interconnect cable like this one.

IF you ever do get the itch to upgrade later, then you might wanna start w/ the AVR (plus maybe an external amp) at that point...




_Man_

 

[FFMichael]

Hi, Mike. Welcome to HTF.

I'm not very familiar w/ UST PJs myself, and there seems to be conflicting info about whether they really need (or benefit much from) specific screens designed/marketed for them. But if you've been happy w/ just white wall in a fairly regular space in the past and given your stated budget/desires, I'd suggest just going w/out a screen for now and add one later, if you really want. The $$$ would likely be better spent on other aspects of your dedicated HT space in that case -- if you do notice or become bothered by wall texture, off-white tint/bias and such, then I'd suggest going w/ a modestly priced screen like Silver Ticket (for under $300).

For wall color, I'd suggest going w/ some kinda (least reflective) dark gray or matte black at least near/around the projection area. (Dark) Blue will bias reflected light, including stray light coming from the PJ. IF not using screen at all, you'll probably want to paint the projection target white (or very light gray) w/ surrounding area dark gray or matte black. Given that, you might actually find going w/ a modestly priced screen w/ entire wall painted the same preferable, especially if you aren't sure about placement or might well alter that at some point.

Assuming you can spend (just about) all of your stated budget on audio, you could probably go w/ a decent, lower-end AVR (that doesn't allow much, if any, expansion like a well-discounted and/or "open box"/refurbed Denon S970H that probably runs $400-500 on good sale) + ELAC UniFi 2.0 for front speakers + some combo of their Debut 2.0 bookselves and/or wall-mountables for surrounds (but wait for a frequently recurring sale so that you can get them at 20-30% off MSRP) + SVS SB-3000 for subwoofer ($1100). Make sure to allocate some $ for good speaker stands for best results (away from walls and other sizeable, reflective objects/surfaces as much as feasible) -- probably can't go w/ floorstanding UniFi 2.0 w/ your budget. But you'll have to wait for a good sale on the AVR and speakers (as I don't see any right now despite the Memorial Day weekend... other than AVR refurbs from Accessories4Less), except the SVS subwoofer, which doesn't ever get discounted that much. IF you can't wait, it'll be much tougher me thinks... and unfortunately, summer's probably not a great time for sales although maybe there could be a good sale for/around July 4th week.

There are few other (similar enough) options, of course, but that's probably how I'd go more or less...

And don't overspend on cabling. Just some inexpensive 14AWG Monoprice and maybe DIY banana plugs will do for speaker wires or maybe something like this if you really want them already terminated for you -- do similarly for the subwoofer interconnect cable like this one.

IF you ever do get the itch to upgrade later, then you might wanna start w/ the AVR (plus maybe an external amp) at that point...




_Man_

Thank you so much for this very detailed and awesome response. I will make sure the area near the projection is black or very dark gray (the wife really wanted this dark blue she found, but I'll just have her use it in the back half of the room away from the projector).

For the screen, I'll start with just the white wall, and possibly upgrade to a screen later. Our only issue with the wall where we were living was that it was warped and would distort the very top of the screen. None of our guests noticed but my OCD hated it. Hopefully these walls are flatter. LOL.

The audio suggestions were super helpful, as that is the area I am most ignorant in for now. I did have one follow up question. I definitely appreciate that your suggestions remained in the budget I stated, but I am curious what the "upgraded" AVR + Amp would be (just in case I can convince my wife to increase the budget a bit)?

Lastly, with the size of the room being 11'x20', I am wondering if I do go for better than the Denon and speakers you listed, if it would be overkill. I like it loud and immersive, but the room feels kinda small standing in it, so I just want to make sure I'm not getting a speaker setup designed for a much bigger room and can't make full use of it.

Again, thanks so much for the help!

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I took your room size into account, heh.

You might be plenty happy w/ that Denon (and those speakers) for a (very) long time since you're new to all this. To do meaningfully better will likely require quite substantial budget increase... something like the Denon X3800H (or better) partly to allow upgradability to use external amp (mostly for the front speakers)... but probably not necessary unless/until you actually become dissatisfied w/ this setup. Yes, part of that will depend on quite how loudly you run the sound to need more (clean) power.

The SVS SB-3000 can help a good deal w/ the (clean) power (and speaker capability) needs by offloading as much of the power-hungry bass as possible to itself, so yeah, I opted to suggest spending a good deal more on that than the AVR (or even the front 3 speakers, if you wait a little while for an ELAC sale).

To do meaningfully better than those ELAC speakers, you'll likely spend at least 2x as much (and probably more) for both speakers and AVR/amps, and you'd probably be well into audiophile territory (mostly for music playback) in that case.

FYI, I currently use basically those ELAC speakers (though w/ floorstanding UniFi 2.0... plus a fairly comparable Hsu subwoofer) for my own HT setup in a somewhat similar size space (though my space is a bit wider, but also shorter), but previously had higher end, audiophile speakers (though mainly for the front channels for music playback) that I could no longer fit (and make good enough use of) in my current space -- I chose the ELACs partly because they have fairly slim profile, which is important for such small/narrow spaces (while going w/ a 120" screen), on top of their performance (and excellent value). I do drive them w/ much more expensive electronics (that I had bought for my previous setup) though, heh -- I actually don't use an AVR at all for my main system, but an Anthem AVM-60 prepro + Emotiva XPS-5 (Gen 3) amp (and also have something more powerful in storage originally meant for a very demanding/power-hungry pair of audiophile speakers that was originally planned for bigger space w/ Atmos), but yeah, they might be a bit overkill for my current situation...

Anyway, if you eventually find you could use more (or cleaner) power (probably because of how the system sounds at louder levels), then it may make sense to upgrade the AVR (and explore external amp usage). You might also consider eventually upgrading the speakers most likely if/when you want to add more channels. Probably start w/ 5.1, and then, if you eventually want 7.1, you could consider either getting a pair of UniFi 2.0 floorstanders (and shifting the bookshelves to surrounds) or something else completely diff for the front channels -- and such upgrades, especially adding more channels, will very likely, naturally demand more clean power from the AVR/amp setup.

_Man_