I thought I would share my recently completed dedicated HT.
I am a long time symphony orchestral musician who has at the age of 69(soon to be 70 this month) decided to build a dedicated HT(go figure...) which I have just finished about a month ago. The room is 16' x 22' and I am running a 9.2.4 system. The original thought was 90% movies and 10% music. That ratio has shifted to about 75/25.
Before I start, a little about this room... I am an avid woodworker with a full shop above my garage. Except for drywall work, everything in this room was made by me. The first thing I made were the speaker stands for the surround bed layer. If you look at the pictures below you will notice that all of the Chane 740's in the bed layer are upside down(meaning the port is up). I asked Jon Lane(owner of Chane Music & Cinema) about this and he said to try them oriented this way. I could not tell the difference either way so it made easier when designing the stands. The stands are made of maple cabinet grade plywood with solid maple on the outside and top and bottom.
Room treatments are a must to give any speaker a chance at greatness. I was going to go the GIK Acoustics route but through an audio buddy of mine(thanks TedB!), I contacted Jeff Hedback out of Indianapolis who is a musician and recording studio designer. He will also design dedicated home listening rooms although it isn't his main gig. I sent him all the info he requested regarding my room and he came up with a design after computer modeling my room. I cannot go too deep into how I constructed as it wouldn't be fair to Jeff.
I built a false wall to house my 128" 2:35.1 scope screen, LCR, and the front sub. There are two wings at 30 degrees which house the left and right speakers. The false wall and extending 5 more feet out, the walls & ceiling are covered with panels of triple black velvet. The rest of the walls and an 8'x8' section of the ceiling are made of diffusion panels constructed up in my shop. The only drywall is on the ceiling and 12" on both the top and bottom of the walls. The space behind the screen/false wall is also acoustically treated. The four ATMOS 740's are all oriented to the main listening position.
There are six seats, three on the main floor and three on a 13" riser. The riser is filled with insulation. I also built a bass soffit(filled with rockwool) that circles the two side and back walls. Cement floor with padding and carpeting.
I took a BIG leap of faith going with Chane Music & Cinema but after some due diligence I went ahead and ordered 3 752's for my LCR, along with 12 740's to complete a 9.2.6 system. After some thought and discussions I decided that having six ATMOS for my size room would actually hinder the sound so I went down to 9.2.4 system.
The Chane 752/740's are an absolute joy to hear on 4k movie multi-channel content. Yes, I ran ARC Genesis on my Anthem AVM 70 so that all the speakers play nice with each other but in my opinion, room correction cannot help a mediocre to bad speaker. The ability to ratchet up the volume with NO adverse effects(other than your ears) is extraordinary.
My two channel listening for the time being is being handled by using a NODE N130 to stream Qobuz via a digital COAX cable to the Anthem AVM 70. I believe that the DACS in the Anthem are being used. Count me impressed by the soundstage the 752's deliver. But in addition to the soundstage, I find the 752's to be an accurate sounding speaker. This is especially important to me when listening to classical music both symphonies and chamber music. Believe me when I say that I know what woodwinds are supposed to sound like as well as the horn section in a Mahler Symphony. The Chane's deliver the goods.
I do believe in speaker break-in. The woofers just have to be played in order to loosen up. The 752's have been changing slightly for the better. I never cared for horn based speakers. I am a devoted soft dome tweeter guy. I don't know Jon's recipe but these 752's sound like no horn-based speakers that I have heard to date. No... I take that back. I heard a great demo of JTR speakers and they were also pretty impressive(at multiples the cost of the Chanes).
The Guarneri String Quartet's Complete Beethoven Quartets sounds pristine. The decay in sound(thanks Jeff) is scary good. Chris Jones' vocals on the album Roadhouses and Automobiles is also fabulous. These speakers don't improve bad recordings. They still sound bad. But man are they good on well recorded material.
In fact, I like the 752's so much that I sold two of the 752's and bought 753's for my left & right speakers.
The pictures below show the original front stage with the Chane 752's and then show the change to the 753's.
Pieces & Parts associated with my build...
- Anthem AVM90 preprocessor
VTV Hypex NC502MP 8 channel amp
Tonewinner AD-7300 7 channel amp(5 channel being driven)
3 Chane 753's/752 - LCR
6 Chane 740's - FW, SS, RS
4 Chane 740's - ATMOS
2 HSU ULS-15 MKII sealed subs
Reavon UBR-X100 4k player
JVC RS1100/NP5 4k Projector
Stewart ST130 G4 2.35:1 128" scope screen
Some of my pics uploaded a bit wonky. My apologies...
