Classic2000
Established Member
Although I have been an avid reader of avforums from the start I have only just joined. When I built my home cinema 20 years ago it was quite innovative and groundbreaking at the time but it’s pretty old hat now. The technology has moved so far ahead in the last 20 years that you can achieve much more than I did then for a lot less money.
Also these forums are a rich source of information, advice, help, experience and inspiration that just wasn’t there 20 years ago. If I were considering building a home cinema now, I would have saved a shed load of money by building a shed or having a loft conversion as some of you have done to very good effect.
I’m 73 years old and have been into high end audio since my teens. I got into home cinema in the early 90s when I put the soundtrack of a Star Trek movie I was watching on TV through my audio system. That was the real start of my journey. I had gone from VHS tape, Yamaha AVRs, a hotch potch of speakers and my TV to a couple of laser disc players, 7 ProAc Studio 250 speakers, 2 Snell 1800 subs, 6 Parasound 1500A power amps, a 6’ drop down screen and a SIM2 CRT projector, all housed in the lounge of my mid-terrace house.
We have a 60’ garden which at the time had a corrugated asbestos garage filled with junk at the bottom of it, so I said to my wife in early 1999, “Why don’t we pull the garage down and replace it with a Marley double garage, line it out and move the home cinema equipment in there”. She jumped at the idea, primarily I think so she could get her lounge back and also for the sake of harmonious relations with the neighbours!
That was the beginning of the most expensive, time consuming and stressful time I had ever spent on a hobby! I contacted Acoustic GRG regarding ways of improving the acoustics in the proposed Marley garage. They suggested I build the cinema out of RPG DiffusorBlox designed by Peter D’Antonio, a high end American acoustic enguneer
OK, I thought, that’s the way to go. So I got a surveyor friend to draw up some plans to submit to the council and they rejected them. Fortunately he knew one of the structural engineers on the council and he drew up some plans that were accepted. The reinforced steel concrete base they wanted laid on which to build the cinema was way over the top. In fact a friend of mine who was a university lecturer in civil engineering said that you could build a block of flats on that base!
I decided to go ahead anyway and my surveyor friend recommended a good builder who agreed to do the job but said as he’d never built anything like that before, I had to agree to pay whatever it cost on an going basis. Work started at the beginning of April 2000 and the builder had allowed 6 weeks to complete it. The cinema base would be 30’ x 15’ but because we live on the side of a hill the boundary walls had to be 9” thick and steel reinforced. The bottom half of the garden had to be lowered by 4’ before the base could be dug out. By the end of that 6 weeks, all I had was the base which had used up all the money I had allocated for the whole building!
Work resumed in July with the added complication that the diffuser blocks come in 2 types, diffusers and absorbers, and they are built in vertical columns so they cannot be keyed in like a normal brick wall. You have to build piers at each corner and lay steel rods in grooves in the blocks to tie them in for structural rigidity. Once the building was up there were 2 layers of acoustic grade plaster board on the inside of the ceiling, the space between the ceiling joists were filled with acoustic grade rock wool with one layer of plaster board on top of that. The eaves had plaster board on the inside, acoustic grade rock wool between them, 2 layers of acoustic grade plaster board on top, covered with marine plywood and then tiled. As one of the builder’s workmen said to me, “When you decide to do something, you certainly don’t f*** about do you?!”
By the time the building was built it had cost twice what I had budgeted for it and I still had to install the air conditioning, under floor heating, lighting, create the interior, decorate it and buy carpets and seats.
The interior walls have to be battened and covered in acoustically transparent fabric in order for the RPG blocks to work properly. I had originally wanted to have a black ceiling, black fabric walls and a black carpet but my wife vetoed that! She agreed to a black ceiling but chose light and dark blue fabric for the walls and a dark blue carpet. As a compromise I put the screen in a 3’ deep black hole.
By November 2000 it was ready to install the equipment.
You enter the foyer of the cinema through 2 doors, an outward opening security door and an inward opening fire door.
The foyer is 5’ x 13’ and contains the equipment, my Blu-rays and allegedly signed photos of some if our favourite stars.
The cinema itself is 21’ x 13’ and is entered by a lead cored door. Initially I had a 6’6” 1.78:1 screen on the wall and because at that time acoustically transparent screens weren’t as good as they are now, the front speakers and subs hidden in front of the screen inside an acoustically transparent frame.
The side and rear speakers are inside acoustically transparent columns.
As I am a lifelong Batman fanatic, I had this painted in the rear right hand corner of the ceiling. We decided to call the cinema Classic because when we were going out together as teenagers our favourite pastime on a Saturday evening was to go to a little cinema called The Classic which was sandwiched between 2 shops in the High Street and specialised in showing old classic films.
I must say the room sounded pretty amazing given there was no additional room correction. There was no Dirac or Trinnov then so all you could do was use a graphic equaliser on each speaker and sub.
The cinema was featured in the April 2002 issue of Home Cinema Choice.
I have made a number of changes to the system over the years. The first change in 2003 was to replace the screen with an 8’ 2.35:1 screen with electric masking. I later ditched my laser discs and replaced them all with DVDs. Then when Blu-ray came out I did the same with the DVDs.
The system remained unchanged until 2008 when I bought my first Lumagen from Gordon Fraser and he has been the most profound influence re the changes I have made in the cinema since then.
Gordon is not only a really nice guy, he has a great deal of experience and really knows what he is doing. He will tell you like it is if you ask him, will readily admit if he doesn’t know and is totally devoid of any hint of b******t.
In 2009 I replaced my Meridian processor with my first Arcam. When my SIM2 projector developed a fault in 2010 I bought a JVC950 which was so much better than the SIM2. In 2014 I replaced the Arcam with an Arcam 950. In 2015 I bought a Lumagen Pro and at the end of 2016 I got a new Epson 10,000 and Oppo 203 from Gordon. I must confess, after he set it up, the Epson/Lumagen Pro combination is superb and for the money I paid, a steal.
Last year I had to replace all my speakers. I’d had them all for over 25 years and they all had drivers with foam surrounds which had all turned to mush. I now have 7 ProAc DT8s and 2 JBL4645Cs driven by a Crown XTI4002 power amp.
I have just replaced the Arcam 950 with an Arcam AV40 supplied by Gordon and discovered the joy of Dirac when he set it up! As well as the increased transparency, clarity and increased detail resolution, the most profound change is in the subs. They are now operating to their full capability and potential to the point of being truly scary in terms of their speed, transparency, power and dynamic range. It was good to see the smile on Gordon’s face when he had finished!
That’s my journey so far and I don’t think I will be making any more significant upgrades to my system during what’s left if my lifetime. The only thing I am hoping to do is to have some black velvet curtains made so that I can black out the front of the cinema which my wife has now agreed to!
If you have read this far, thank you and I hope you have enjoyed sharing in my home cinema journey.
Also these forums are a rich source of information, advice, help, experience and inspiration that just wasn’t there 20 years ago. If I were considering building a home cinema now, I would have saved a shed load of money by building a shed or having a loft conversion as some of you have done to very good effect.
I’m 73 years old and have been into high end audio since my teens. I got into home cinema in the early 90s when I put the soundtrack of a Star Trek movie I was watching on TV through my audio system. That was the real start of my journey. I had gone from VHS tape, Yamaha AVRs, a hotch potch of speakers and my TV to a couple of laser disc players, 7 ProAc Studio 250 speakers, 2 Snell 1800 subs, 6 Parasound 1500A power amps, a 6’ drop down screen and a SIM2 CRT projector, all housed in the lounge of my mid-terrace house.
We have a 60’ garden which at the time had a corrugated asbestos garage filled with junk at the bottom of it, so I said to my wife in early 1999, “Why don’t we pull the garage down and replace it with a Marley double garage, line it out and move the home cinema equipment in there”. She jumped at the idea, primarily I think so she could get her lounge back and also for the sake of harmonious relations with the neighbours!
That was the beginning of the most expensive, time consuming and stressful time I had ever spent on a hobby! I contacted Acoustic GRG regarding ways of improving the acoustics in the proposed Marley garage. They suggested I build the cinema out of RPG DiffusorBlox designed by Peter D’Antonio, a high end American acoustic enguneer
OK, I thought, that’s the way to go. So I got a surveyor friend to draw up some plans to submit to the council and they rejected them. Fortunately he knew one of the structural engineers on the council and he drew up some plans that were accepted. The reinforced steel concrete base they wanted laid on which to build the cinema was way over the top. In fact a friend of mine who was a university lecturer in civil engineering said that you could build a block of flats on that base!
I decided to go ahead anyway and my surveyor friend recommended a good builder who agreed to do the job but said as he’d never built anything like that before, I had to agree to pay whatever it cost on an going basis. Work started at the beginning of April 2000 and the builder had allowed 6 weeks to complete it. The cinema base would be 30’ x 15’ but because we live on the side of a hill the boundary walls had to be 9” thick and steel reinforced. The bottom half of the garden had to be lowered by 4’ before the base could be dug out. By the end of that 6 weeks, all I had was the base which had used up all the money I had allocated for the whole building!
Work resumed in July with the added complication that the diffuser blocks come in 2 types, diffusers and absorbers, and they are built in vertical columns so they cannot be keyed in like a normal brick wall. You have to build piers at each corner and lay steel rods in grooves in the blocks to tie them in for structural rigidity. Once the building was up there were 2 layers of acoustic grade plaster board on the inside of the ceiling, the space between the ceiling joists were filled with acoustic grade rock wool with one layer of plaster board on top of that. The eaves had plaster board on the inside, acoustic grade rock wool between them, 2 layers of acoustic grade plaster board on top, covered with marine plywood and then tiled. As one of the builder’s workmen said to me, “When you decide to do something, you certainly don’t f*** about do you?!”
By the time the building was built it had cost twice what I had budgeted for it and I still had to install the air conditioning, under floor heating, lighting, create the interior, decorate it and buy carpets and seats.
The interior walls have to be battened and covered in acoustically transparent fabric in order for the RPG blocks to work properly. I had originally wanted to have a black ceiling, black fabric walls and a black carpet but my wife vetoed that! She agreed to a black ceiling but chose light and dark blue fabric for the walls and a dark blue carpet. As a compromise I put the screen in a 3’ deep black hole.
By November 2000 it was ready to install the equipment.
You enter the foyer of the cinema through 2 doors, an outward opening security door and an inward opening fire door.
The foyer is 5’ x 13’ and contains the equipment, my Blu-rays and allegedly signed photos of some if our favourite stars.
The cinema itself is 21’ x 13’ and is entered by a lead cored door. Initially I had a 6’6” 1.78:1 screen on the wall and because at that time acoustically transparent screens weren’t as good as they are now, the front speakers and subs hidden in front of the screen inside an acoustically transparent frame.
The side and rear speakers are inside acoustically transparent columns.
As I am a lifelong Batman fanatic, I had this painted in the rear right hand corner of the ceiling. We decided to call the cinema Classic because when we were going out together as teenagers our favourite pastime on a Saturday evening was to go to a little cinema called The Classic which was sandwiched between 2 shops in the High Street and specialised in showing old classic films.
I must say the room sounded pretty amazing given there was no additional room correction. There was no Dirac or Trinnov then so all you could do was use a graphic equaliser on each speaker and sub.
The cinema was featured in the April 2002 issue of Home Cinema Choice.
I have made a number of changes to the system over the years. The first change in 2003 was to replace the screen with an 8’ 2.35:1 screen with electric masking. I later ditched my laser discs and replaced them all with DVDs. Then when Blu-ray came out I did the same with the DVDs.
The system remained unchanged until 2008 when I bought my first Lumagen from Gordon Fraser and he has been the most profound influence re the changes I have made in the cinema since then.
Gordon is not only a really nice guy, he has a great deal of experience and really knows what he is doing. He will tell you like it is if you ask him, will readily admit if he doesn’t know and is totally devoid of any hint of b******t.
In 2009 I replaced my Meridian processor with my first Arcam. When my SIM2 projector developed a fault in 2010 I bought a JVC950 which was so much better than the SIM2. In 2014 I replaced the Arcam with an Arcam 950. In 2015 I bought a Lumagen Pro and at the end of 2016 I got a new Epson 10,000 and Oppo 203 from Gordon. I must confess, after he set it up, the Epson/Lumagen Pro combination is superb and for the money I paid, a steal.
Last year I had to replace all my speakers. I’d had them all for over 25 years and they all had drivers with foam surrounds which had all turned to mush. I now have 7 ProAc DT8s and 2 JBL4645Cs driven by a Crown XTI4002 power amp.
I have just replaced the Arcam 950 with an Arcam AV40 supplied by Gordon and discovered the joy of Dirac when he set it up! As well as the increased transparency, clarity and increased detail resolution, the most profound change is in the subs. They are now operating to their full capability and potential to the point of being truly scary in terms of their speed, transparency, power and dynamic range. It was good to see the smile on Gordon’s face when he had finished!
That’s my journey so far and I don’t think I will be making any more significant upgrades to my system during what’s left if my lifetime. The only thing I am hoping to do is to have some black velvet curtains made so that I can black out the front of the cinema which my wife has now agreed to!
If you have read this far, thank you and I hope you have enjoyed sharing in my home cinema journey.