It's been a while since I posted here. I've been busy with work and then over the past year, busy also building a rest house / retirement home in Silang, Cavite.
Of course, this house could not be complete without a home theater:
I've applied some of the lessons I learned from my original theater. The Focal Stella speakers were too close to the walls and so the soundstage was too narrow. This time, I widened the room considerably to give a lot of breathing space for the huge speakers. Floor dimensions are around 8 meters x 6 meters.
Ceiling height is similar - varies from 11 feet in front to 12 feet at the rear.
Acoustics consist of 2", 60 kg rockwool at the entire front wall and half of the rear wall, and then diffusers at the side walls. I would consider that the wood tile flooring could be considered part of the acoustics. The room is definitely not dead but the effect is quite nice. Once I put in a sofa and curtains, that should provide a little bit more dampening and that might just be enough. We'll see. I hope some pinoydvd friends can drop by some day, listen and give some suggestions. My preliminary assessment - it sounds a lot better than the Manila theater.
The project has drained my resources so that for now, I will live with a minimum number of equipment. The speakers from Manila - Focal Utopias for the LCR, Focal Electra for the surrounds and JBL XPL for the wides. The room is wired for surround back speakers, as well as Dolby ceiling speakers (4) but that will come in the future. There are two of my SVS PB-13 Ultra subs.
What has happened to the Manila theater? Still alive with Focal Sopra speakers which, in my view, are even better than the Focal Scala Utopia speakers. They are actually pretty incredible.
The prepro is a new Marantz 7702, with my 3 Emotiva monoblocks, Bryston stereo amp and a new Behringer stereo amp for the wides.
The projector is my SIM2 Mico 50. The problem with this projector is that it is not very bright. I have experimented with a relatively small 100", 1.1 gain Elite screen, with the chairs moved up front. The picture quality is really good but the screen is small. Maybe in a few years, I will upgrade the video.
The flooring is quite nice. It actually consists of three types of wood - kamagong, yakal and narra - as can be better seen in this picture:
The ceiling also has some kind of design to it, as can be seen in this photo. You may also note that I have surrounded the screen - wall, ceiling and floor - with black.
Beside the theater is a game room with billiards, foosball, air hockey, darts and board games. The wall is a mural painted by some UP artists. The concept is mine.
In front of the house is a beautiful row of 5 meter-high mahogany trees, which are actually part of my property:
The place is not that far from Manila - 1 hour from Magallanes interchange via Carmona exit of SLEX. Anyone for billiards?
