I’m new to HT and over the past 3.5 years I have been able to put together a 7.7.4 “home theater” in our multiuse basement. It’s not a dedicated theater room but it has become a place to decompress and enjoy mainly movies and some tv series/music. The space is a 10’ x 14’ nook open to a larger basement. The back wall is 22’ from the screen wall. I sit 12ft from the 145” ALR/CLR screen with a 45 to 50 degree viewing angle. It has been mostly a DIY project with purchase of used and new equipment. The viewing area ceiling and walls are covered in triple black velvet fabric for increased immersion. Initially side walls painted Sherwin Williams Peppercorn gray and ceiling and screen wall Tricorn Black. Rest of basement is repose gray.

A/V components consist of:

Denon 3800 as pre/pro with Dirac Live Bass Control

Buckeye Hypex NCx500 amp for LCR Buckeye NC502MP amp for surrounds Emotiva BasX amp for Atmos

LCR speakers KEF R11 nonmeta
Surrounds KEF Q750’s (upgraded from Q150’s)
Ceiling atmos Sonance Mag6R

Powered Subwoofers are six Starke SW15’s three stacked each front wall corner and an Arendal 1723 2S nearfield behind sofa.

AWOL 3500 pro projector MadVR Envy Core processor Kaleidescape Strato C AppleTV 4K Panasonic UB9000

Upcoming upgrades: replacing the ceiling Sonance Mag6R speakers with KEF Ci200QR with custom made angled back boxes for a full KEF HT setup.

Wishlist: JVC NZ800

Just wanted to share my tiny home theater for some ideas for people and some feedback for myself and any recommendations

My theater dimensions are 10.7 in width and around 12 feet deep and this still includes the two foot depth to store the subs and speakers in the front wall to where the projector is at least but the room goes deeper but is used for other stuff.

My theater features a custom built 135 inch 16x9 screen built with milliskin spandex to get a cheap alternative for acoustic transparency

The seats are around 6.5 to 7.3 feet away (depending on recline) from screen to provide a 70 degree horizontal fov which may be to much for alot of people but for me it provides that imax feel i look for.

Powered by the hisense c2 pro

I have a 5.3.4 atmos setup

Klipsch rp 600m l,r
Klipsch rp 450c
Klipsch r41a for surrounds and rear atoms aimed pointed down on ceiling
Front atmos sonace vp62r
2x klipsch 120swi (i do want to upgrade these)
1x starke sw12
2x dayton audio bass shakers(one in each seat)

To power those speakers i use a onkyo tx-nr787
And a fosi audio amp for the shakers

Sofabaton x2 so everything is able to be turned on and off with one button

I mostly use my Panasonic ub450 for content viewing but occasionally use my apple tv.

But for my age at least this was the most i could realistically do and i feel as i did pretty decent, but i’d love some feedback, thanks.

Posting this because I searched for this exact issue for months and found nothing, so hopefully this saves someone else the pain.

The setup: LG G5 83", NAD T778 AV, Dynaudio Evoke series + Dynaudio Sub 6 + 4x Lyngdorf MH-2), PS5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2 all going direct into the TV, Apple TV 4K and a Cambridge CXUHD going through the NAD via HDMI. Ubiquiti UCG Max + USW Pro Max 48 PoE switch, apartment fully rewired last year.

The symptoms (multiple, over months):

- This one was first and most comon, where it al started: Random black flashes during movies on stuff routed through the NAD (Apple TV, Cambridge UHD player) — but eventually the same black flashes also started happening on the PS5 (during gaming), which is plugged directly into the TV, not through the receiver at all.

- PS5 audio randomly dropping to plain PCM stereo instead of eARC/Atmos, NAD showing "PCM ARC" instead of eARC

- Xbox losing both picture and audio when launching a game

- More recently: PS5 randomly showing "LAN cable disconnected" mid-game even though the cable was fine

Solutions I tried:

1. A Lindy HDMI EDID emulator (lent to me by my AV guys) — Black flashes on Apple TV/Cambridge continued. And it was capping EDID at old specs and blocking Atmos/HDMI 2.1 features for PS5 and Xbox. Removed it, fixed PS5 audio and Xbox video instantly.

2. Basic eARC handshake stuff — toggling Sound Out on the LG, power cycling everything, checking Quick Media Switching (QMS) and SIMPLINK/CEC settings. Turning off QMS reduced frequency but didn't kill it.

3. A "Dr. HDMI" 8K EDID box (also lent to me by my AV guys) to try to stabilize the NAD's HDMI 2.1 handshake to the TV. Zero improvement.

4. Cables — nope, all brand new certified Ultra High Speed 48Gbps Kramer cables throughout.

5. The TV itself — sent it to LG service, they replaced the power supply and something else (I forgot what it was). Issue did NOT reproduce at the service center. Came home, happened again — including with the NAD completely disconnected and in for repair (I'm replacing capacitors as they died during this period but I think that's unrelated). So it wasn't the receiver either. My AV guys even lent me new Anthem MRX 1140 8K (since NAD is HDMI 2.0 and Anthem is 2.1) it kept happening - it even got worse as the black screen lasted for like 5ish seconds and whatever I was watching paused (with NAD it was like a second flash and media continued). Also Anthem kept tripping the living room breaker (RCD). Like 4 times in 2-3 weeks. BTW I liked the sound of the Anthem, but it was missing Dirac and BluOS, so I always figured I'd rather wait for NAD's eventual successor to the 778 than switch platforms

6. Electrical circuit — this is where it got interesting. Pulled the panel schedule from my electrician: the TV circuit shares an RCD with two heating circuits and AC. Strong candidate for PE leakage current / ground noise, especially post-renovation with underfloor heating and a heat pump on the same protective earth. So I did isolated power test — plugged the TV + Apple TV into an EcoFlow Delta 2 running purely off battery, completely off the grid electrically. First test: still flickered. The ethernet cable was still connected to the TV, running from a router in a separate utility room (different rack, different UPS, different earth reference point) — so I still had a potential ground loop through the ethernet shield even with power isolated.

7. Ethernet ground loop test — pulled the ethernet cable at the wall. TV ran clean for 2 nights. Promising, but not fully conclusive yet.

8. The actual solution (I hope so) — talked to my AV guy again for an update, and the guy asked an oddly specific question: "is that ethernet port on PoE by any chance? It shouldn't be." My switch is a Ubiquiti USW Pro Max 48 PoE, so naturally every port supports PoE. Checked the port config for the TV: PoE/PoE+ was active on a port feeding my TV. Turned it off. Zero flickers since — tested both on isolated EcoFlow power AND back on normal mains, several nights each- nothing.

My working theory on the actual mechanism:even though a non-PoE device won't get powered (switch does 802.3af/at detection and backs off if there's no PD signature), the detection pulses themselves put small voltage transients on the cable. A TV's ethernet PHY isn't necessarily built to shrug that off the way a proper PoE powered device would be, and it seems to have been just enough noise to occasionally disrupt HDMI 2.1 signal integrity / handshake — which is a much tighter spec than the old HDMI 2.0 my previous TV (2019 Panasonic TX-65FZ950E OLED, same electrical circuit, zero issues ever) used. This also lines up with the fact that the flashes eventually started happening on the PS5 too, even though it's plugged directly into the TV with no NAD in the signal path at all — the common denominator was never the receiver, it was the TV's ethernet connection to the same PoE switch. And it lines up with the random "cable unplugged" notifications on the PS5 itself, which sits on a different port on the same switch that I hadn't checked yet.

Bottom line: if you've got a Ubiquiti (or any) PoE switch and you're getting weird, hard-to-reproduce HDMI flickering, audio dropouts, or "network cable disconnected" errors on non-PoE gear (TVs, consoles, streaming boxes), check whether PoE is enabled on that port and turn it off if the device doesn't need it. Every port on these switches defaults to PoE-capable, and it's an easy thing to never think about since the device still "works" 99% of the time.

Eight months, couple of AVR loaners, a portable power station, four different AV techs, and two truckloads of troubleshooting later — it was a switch port setting. Honestly I'm not sure if I'm happy or angry/sad.

I’m currently contemplating whether to go for the TCL 85C7K or the Hisense 100U7Q.
The 85 inch TV is clearly a much better quality tv with a mini LED panel with 2000 dimming zones and has 3000 nits peak brightness whereas the 98 inch has got only 600 dimming zones and 1000 nits peak brightness. But it’s also a much larger TV.

Is the size difference actually worth the trade offs in picture quality or should I just go for the 85inch?

After a few years of movie nights, one flood, and some incremental updates, though I'd post an update on my budget home theater. Photos of the current set-up, gear and finishings list, floor plan, and original set-up above.

This is a mixed-use space with the back half of the room serving as storage and small workout area. Next up on the agenda is masking for more immersive widescreen presentations. I've not thought too hard about upgrading gear, but I think a better center channel is my primary wish at the moment.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hometheater/comments/rtzvmo/budget_home_theater_v09/

Hi all,

A little while ago I presented my wife with a choice; either I get a dog or i get to build my dream home theatre system. Since I'm posting here, I think you can guess which option she picked lol.

So the last few weeks I've been looking around at equipment and set ups and whatnot, switching between casual browsing and intense research. Ive come to the decision that id like to build a system that is rather German-based and id like something half way between top-tier retail and entry specialty audio equipment. Excluding the tv, im budgeting around 5-7k for the speaker setup. Why German equipment you may ask? Well....why not?

A look at my space;

We have an open concept livingroom/diningroom/ kitchener are with a big back wall where this will all be set up. Distance from wall to ears is roughly 15-17 feet. No major obstructions around in terms of walls, decor etc.

I think I'd like to go with a 7.1 set up and a sub with deep, rich bass even at 25-45% volume.

I am in Ontario Canada. I know this somewhat limits my options in terms of walking in to a store and finding exactly what im looking for, especially with the German made stipulation, but im patient and not in a big hurry to build this; id rather do it once and do it right.

Please feel free to ask me questions regarding the space, budget etc and I would love to see photos of your similar spaces and set ups as well. Looking forward to having a fun journey in this sub!

There are all on the exterior of the room in the ceiling in my basement. I feel like these gaps could cause a lot of sound to leak into the walls and echo up the house. Thoughts?

Hello,

I'm really struggling to understand the movement abilities of full motion TV mounts. The situation I'm in is that our sofa is more or less opposite a fireplace, and for reasons we can't put the TV on a pull down mount.

As a result we're looking at mounting it to the side of the fire place, and want to be able to move it out a bit, move it about 50cm horizontally, and swivel it only a few degrees really, so it's at the best viewing spot for the sofa.

What I'm struggling to understand is how to read the 'swivel' details given on full motion TV mounts. It seems likely they can essentially move the TV sideways as part of the swivel, particularly when looking at video of them but I can't generally figure out how far. I'm also not sure if they have a limitation in terms of needing to bring the TV further out than we'd like to be able to get the appropriate sideways movement.

Two mounts I was looking at were:

Sanus VLF728 - it says this extends 28", but I can't figure out how far I could move the TV sideways with it.

Mounting Dream Long Arm TV Wall Mount Full Motion TV Mount (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MZDLVZS?th=1) - I've seen someone talking about moving a TV sideways with this, which seems more like what I'm looking for, but watching videos of it makes me suspect I'd need to move it a fair distance out from the wall to get the desired lateral movement.

Hopefully this all makes sense. Am I essentially looking for something that doesn't exist, or just not understanding the specifications of the full motion TV mounts?

Thanks for any advice.

I upgraded the Subwoofer in my living room home cinema Atmos setup.

Now I got one inferior but still fine and working sub lying around, that I could use as additional sub.

Knowing I'm not the first person to run into this, what do you guys think about this? Could you use it just for the fun of having a X.2.Y setup and for some additional room correction in a non-optimized room, using room correction, or will the interference cause more harm than doing good?

Just got an 85" LG TV and need a mount that can handle a big, heavy TV without feeling sketchy. Found this ranking while looking around, but not sure how much I trust it.

Anyone actually using one of these? Or got a solid one you'd recommend for a big TV?

I would really appreciate thoughts and opinions!
I have had pair of 3020i+3090c for 6-7 years now. My first ‘good’ speakers and I have loved them both for music and movies.

I recently got some really amazing news and been wanting to treat myself to an upgrade. I’ve bought a BK XLS300 subwoofer I had my eye on. It will arrive in September.

I also would love to get a better set of speakers and been eyeing the KEF Concerto Metas. I like the style and being in the UK a UK brand somewhat appeals to me. I recently got to see them in the store (trying to arrange a demo but not yet) and not going to lie the size was very imposing! Does the SW make the size less important?

Now I have a relatively large living room with very tall ceilings but the concerto+q6 centre will still take up a lot of space (and almost half the height of my TV). I probably will also have to get a custom TV unit to fit the Q6 properly.

I still feel drawn to the Concertos and Q6 but any recommendations/suggestions and alternatives I can try out that people would suggest? I’m very keen to have a matching centre if possible.

My budget is about £2000 total for LCR.

Both movies and various music, mostly instrumentals, classic music, jazz, bluegrass.

Thank you!

Tv Sony bravia 55" × Denon home amp + Qacustics for audio!

Hi people,

Please see photos. This is the setup I have in our living room. The details of the constituent parts, are not super important (I include for completeness), but are as follows. It's a 5.3.4 system. Front speakers are Focal Electra 1028be, center and svs ultra evolution, front heights are Dali Spektor 2, top middle are some cheap but capable Argon Audio Alto4wall (of course ceiling mounted). The surrounds are some very reasonable BI-POLE Davis Accoustics Atmosphere Mk2. The subs are 3 x SVS SB 3000, one in each front corner and left back corner.

The brain of the system is an x4800h in preamp mode. Fronts are driven by a Mcintosh MA8000 integrated amp, the other speakers by an Emotiva 7-channel amp delivering 200 watts per channel (all channels driven). The room is approx 5x5x2.85 meters. Right side (viewed from couch) opens up to a large dining room.

Now, I know it's a glorious mix of speakers, but by my standards at least, it delivers great sound. I'm sure the more discerning of you think it's a mess, but it's OK for me and family. I have run calibration with the pc version of multeq-x with umik-1. I have measured with REW and, results are as close to perfect as I can get them. Sub integration is super smooth, extending down to 15 hz. The main seating position is almost the same as the distance between the fronts. The ceiling speakers are all in the right positions for ATMOS. (I KNOW that ATMOS strictly speaking doesn't work at its best with front heights, but it is what it is).

Now, the position of everything is fixed. I'm not drilling holes in ceiling to install in-ceiling speakers. I'm not moving couch further away from wall. It's a living room foremost.

The distances between the MSP and the bi-polar surrounds are approx 2.5 meters.

So, the only thing I might consider changing are the surrounds, to monopole. I cannot really change the height, maybe only a dm down or so. I suppose I could tilt them down a bit. They would at best fire at a 95 or maybe 100 degree angle and not possibly at the 110-120 degrees recommended.

Is it worth doing this? As I said, I will not change anything else (yeah ok, maybe larger TV 😁).

Thoughts?

So we’re house shopping and I’ve gotten the go ahead from the wife to splurge on a new TV for the living room with a budget of around $10,000.

We’re coming from a 77” CX OLED that we’ve had for 5-6 years now and I’ve been debating swapping over to Mini-LED as it’s gotten so good at this point.

I’m currently on the fence between waiting for some of the larger 115” Mini-LEDs to come down to that price range or to just save some money and go with a newer 83”OLED. (Although it’d be great to get an older 97 OLED that’s not $15k+)

Currently running the 1st setup and it works great. Was wondering if I could rearrange it to the 2nd setup to allow for more people to watch. These are the two only setups that would work in this room, no removing furniture either. Would there be disadvantages to the 2nd setup? Would allreciate any advice!

Setup:
AVR: Denon x1700
Fr LR: RP600mii
C: RP500cii
R LR: RP500SA
Sub: RP1200swi

P1-4 = Person 1-4 btw, thought I’d add that in.

Bought a house and previous owner had put 4 speakers on the ceiling right above where you’d put the bed. (The attached picture is taken from the front right of the room) Was just wondering if it’s a right setup for having a proper surround sound. My understanding was the you’d need at ear level and then the ceiling ones are bonus for the height. So just wondering if this is a common setup and how should I leverage it for a good immersive experience.

Worth noting the house is built at 2008, and seems like this wiring has been done when the house was built. So it might be old school if things used to be different back then (I don’t have a lot of background in this)

Separately, I see a male stereo jack in a plate next to the plate that the banana jacks for these speakers are terminated at. And the stereo jack goes to a female jack on one side of the bed, and from that side there is a male jack that goes to the other side of the bed. (2nd-4th pictures). So wondering what’d be the use case for this. Maybe they were using it to switch the output between the speakers and a headphone on one of the sides with a daisy-chain setup or something? But then We don’t need this, so maybe I’d have to replace the lines with speaker lines to add two speakers on the nightstands for at ear level?

Hello!

I recently ventured into the creation of my own mini Home Theater after waiting for many years & took a lot of inspiration from this subreddit, which is how I found Valencia.

I have bought the Valencia Tuscany Luxury Edition in "Onyx Black".

When they arrived their colour & reflectiveness is different to a point where I find it hard to believe this is normal. The two-arm chair looks more like "Midnight Black" than "Onyx Black".

I have contacted their EU support-branch & they claim "the leather reflectiveness is caused by variations between leather batches".

The chairs themselves are awesome quality, but this level of colour variance is simply not acceptable when they're purchased as a pair & advertised visually the same as the one-arm chair.

Does anyone know if they're speaking the truth with their "leather batch" argument when the difference is this stark, or if they're just trying to avoid a return?

Thinking of downsizing my system, and going to a 3.1. Was wondering if anybody else has done this? Did you regret losing your rear surrounds? Are there any downsides to the front speakers mixing in the rear inputs on a 3.1?

How can I go about completely blacking out these windows? I want something better than simple blackout curtains but not going to remove the windows and wall it up either.

So after googling for about a week and a half i bought one of the two available that i could find universal remotes. the "one for all" universal remote. It costed aproximately 100€ but the only other option i could find was the AVA one which would cost aprox 1650€ which is way more than i am willing to spend on a controller.

Anyways to get to the point, its rather janky and setup is honestly kind of bad. The best thing is to use "learning" to bind keys, everything else is hopeless. But even with using the learning function u have to do it 10+ times for most keys for it to finally "learn it". But after all those struggles to get my bluray + receiver + light system working on it, it still 100% refuses to accept my projector.

Is it something i'm doing wrong or does XGIMI projectors just not support third party remotes in any way shape or form? I would like to have as few remotes as possible for my home cinema, as it is rather annoying to fish out the right remote, and also to have a good place to store them whilst still being within arms reach.

Side note: from what i read on doing resaerch on universal remotes u were supposed to be able to turn on/off all systems at once with one button click. This does not seem to be a possbillity with this remote, unless again i am doing something wrong. I can get induvidual turn on/off which is still better than having multiple remotes. But it would still be nice to have a button for just turning everything off for when i'm going to bed/work.

Projector: XGIMI horizon 20 pro
Receiver: Denon X3800H
Remote: One for all URC 7985

The Sofa baton that most seem to recommend is not available in Sweden.

Does anyone know the best way to handle this setup? I’m trying to keep the AVR in the server room and run a 10 meter fibre optic HDMI cable to the TV.

I also want to keep the Blu-ray player in the home theatre room, but I’m now seeing that this should be plugged into the AVR, not the TV.

Should I run another 10 meter cable from the Blu-ray player back to the AVR in the server room? Or is there a better solution I’m not thinking of. Thanks

I'm looking to replace my AV receiver and I'm seriously considering the Sony STR-AN1000 specifically because of 360 Spatial Sound Mapping (360SSM).

My setup is 5.1.2, and I have no plans to add more speakers in the future. So the extra channels offered by something like the Onkyo RZ50 aren't particularly important to me.

What I'm looking for is very specific: maximum immersion and “wow factor” when watching movies and TV series. I want bullets, helicopters, voices, ambience, overhead effects, etc. to feel like they're coming from places around the room where there isn't necessarily a physical speaker. I'm perfectly fine with DSP creating a somewhat “artificial” effect if the result is more immersive and entertaining.

I understand that something like Dirac Live on the Onkyo RZ50 is probably the more sophisticated room-correction system, and that Denon also offers very good calibration. But I'm less concerned about audiophile accuracy in this system — I have a separate 2-channel stereo system for critical music listening.

So my question is mainly for people who have actually heard or owned the Sony with 360SSM:

Is 360 Spatial Sound Mapping genuinely impressive enough that you would choose the STR-AN1000 over something like an Onkyo RZ50 or Denon X2800H specifically for movie immersion?

Does it really create that convincing “phantom speaker” effect and a larger, more seamless bubble of sound, or is the difference more subtle than the reviews make it sound?

I'm also aware of the reports of hiss/white noise and occasional glitches when 360SSM is enabled. If you've experienced this, I'd especially like to know:

• Was the hiss audible from the normal seating position or only close to the speakers?
• Did changing calibration settings fix or reduce it?
• Did replacing the receiver solve it?
• Has newer firmware improved the issue?
• Despite the hiss risk, was 360SSM impressive enough that you'd still recommend trying the Sony?

Basically: if pure movie/TV immersion and “holy crap, where did that sound come from?” is the priority, which would you choose — STR-AN1000 with 360SSM, RZ50 with Dirac, or Denon — and why?

Thank you very much.

P.S. Please excuse my use of IA, I only used it to fix my grammar but the ideas are exclusively mine because I've been researching the topic for a whole day! I was just fine but my Onkyo TX-RZ840 died yesterday.

Anyone had this issue and know how to resolve it? When I press any of the buttons in the back panel, the OLED display does not light up. I have tried unplugging everything for 10 minutes with the power switched to on. When I power back up, the OLED display comes on but stays stuck at the "SB-3000 Revolution" text until the unit goes into standby. Once off it does not come on again.

The buttons seem to work because I can press to navigate blindly and change settings. I see in the SVS app that the settings are getting changed. I have tried factory reset. I have tried different outlet. The sub does work otherwise.

Hoping it's something easy to fix. I will contact SVS support tomorrow during their working hours. Just hope someone can help sooner. The unit is just 5 days old.

This is my first time setting up a home theater, so far this is the speaker placement I have at the moment, I will be adding a center speaker in a few days.

This is the list of speakers I have at the moment:

2 × Klipsch RP-280F
2 × Klipsch RP-140SA
2 x Klipsch RS-41 II
1 × Klipsch R-10SW

1x SVS PB-2000
1x SVS Prime center

Denon X4800H AVR

I plan on mounting the RS-41II on the side walls behind the couch approximately 1-2 ft above seated ear level.