After a tour of the expansive grounds filled with amazing animals, the client led Johnson into the room that he had already stripped to the studs for this theater project. This client took his child’s request to heart and was rearing to go. It was quite apparent to Johnson that the room had only one option for screen placement. One wall had a huge fireplace on it and the other two had windows, so the screen had to be placed on the remaining free wall. The customer absolutely wanted a projector rather than a plasma or big screen set, so Johnson knew he would have to deal with the ambient light in the room. The location of the projector and screen were predetermined, but the projector placement was another problem that Johnson immediately knew he had to deal with. The room has a tall vaulted ceiling that spans only half of the room so throw distance was going to be an issue. Johnson needed to get a long pole mount to drop the projector low enough off the ceiling so that it would not have any keystone effect. Most projectors have a keystone adjustment, but nothing beats getting a squarely mounted projector so you don’t have to do major tweaks with the projector’s settings. The floor had plenty of crawlspace that would help the installers run wires properly and, of course, wires could be run anywhere in the ceiling, since there was no sheetrock up yet. Because of the non-linearity of the room, Johnson felt that the shape of the room would be great for acoustics with only minimal adjustments. Johnson talked with the client about scope and budget and asked him how deluxe a system he wanted. In the end, the client wanted a system with more pop than the system that wowed his daughter at a comparable price. Johnson was confident this was absolutely possible with some creative equipment choices and smart interior design, since it was not going to be a dedicated theater room and didn’t need expensive wall treatments.
Since no real theme had been decided on yet, Johnson did not know if he would need to spec in any acoustical material or special wall coverings. He started designing the system with a backbone of Tara Labs speaker cable to all speaker locations. Johnson knew he wanted to use James shallow depth in-wall speakers for all seven speakers, because they could be tuned acoustically after the room was completed. Since there was a plank wood floor over a crawlspace to work with, Johnson knew a good floor-standing subwoofer placed correctly in the room would sound great and even give some sensation to the feet. Therefore, the design would include a James EMB 12-inch powered sub. As the house was situated in the middle of a huge farm with only four-legged neighbors nearby, noise was not an issue. Johnson chose the new (at the time) Yamaha DXP-1100 DLP projector because of the brightness, lens shift capability and the 4000:1 contrast ratio. He went with a Da-Lite 106-inch electric Cinema Contour perforated screen. The client was concerned with a clean look on the equipment rack, so a Middle Atlantic in-wall flush rack with a smoke plexiglass door was added. The front of the rack would open to the theater room and the rear of the rack would be accessible via an adjoining bedroom closet. The client’s wife was quite happy to have the gear hidden away yet easily accessible in a separated part of the house, keeping clutter out of the theater room.
The room is fairly large at twenty by twenty four feet, so B&K separates were chosen to provide the power needed to properly fuel the James loudspeakers. The pre-amp tuner chosen for the system was the B&K Reference 50 and the amp was B&K’s 200.7 (200 watts x 7). The client is a DirecTV customer but did not have a hi-def set yet, so he purchased the HD-TiVo unit available through DirecTV. New Wave Home Systems also chose the Marantz DV-8400 DVD reference player for a source unit. For system control, Johnson added a Marantz RC-9200 color touchscreen remote. Even though all of the equipment had been specced out for the bid, the theme and look of the theater was still up in the air. Art deco, modern and contemporary are themes for theaters that typically get bandied around, but none of those seemed to fit in this case. It was during the pre-wire process that the theme was finally thought out and nailed down.
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Since no real theme had been decided on yet, Johnson did not know if he would need to spec in any acoustical material or special wall coverings. He started designing the system with a backbone of Tara Labs speaker cable to all speaker locations. Johnson knew he wanted to use James shallow depth in-wall speakers for all seven speakers, because they could be tuned acoustically after the room was completed. Since there was a plank wood floor over a crawlspace to work with, Johnson knew a good floor-standing subwoofer placed correctly in the room would sound great and even give some sensation to the feet. Therefore, the design would include a James EMB 12-inch powered sub. As the house was situated in the middle of a huge farm with only four-legged neighbors nearby, noise was not an issue. Johnson chose the new (at the time) Yamaha DXP-1100 DLP projector because of the brightness, lens shift capability and the 4000:1 contrast ratio. He went with a Da-Lite 106-inch electric Cinema Contour perforated screen. The client was concerned with a clean look on the equipment rack, so a Middle Atlantic in-wall flush rack with a smoke plexiglass door was added. The front of the rack would open to the theater room and the rear of the rack would be accessible via an adjoining bedroom closet. The client’s wife was quite happy to have the gear hidden away yet easily accessible in a separated part of the house, keeping clutter out of the theater room.
The room is fairly large at twenty by twenty four feet, so B&K separates were chosen to provide the power needed to properly fuel the James loudspeakers. The pre-amp tuner chosen for the system was the B&K Reference 50 and the amp was B&K’s 200.7 (200 watts x 7). The client is a DirecTV customer but did not have a hi-def set yet, so he purchased the HD-TiVo unit available through DirecTV. New Wave Home Systems also chose the Marantz DV-8400 DVD reference player for a source unit. For system control, Johnson added a Marantz RC-9200 color touchscreen remote. Even though all of the equipment had been specced out for the bid, the theme and look of the theater was still up in the air. Art deco, modern and contemporary are themes for theaters that typically get bandied around, but none of those seemed to fit in this case. It was during the pre-wire process that the theme was finally thought out and nailed down.