Negatron II

[NBPK402]

I am not familiar with clay pads, but it it does what you want and does not permanently seal the pipes, it should work.

I just have rags stuck in each end of mine, only because they are open in the attic in the middle for making pulling the wire easier for me... don't want anything crawling in from the attic and down into the room, if you know what I mean.

Is the equipment room somewhere that is going to be exposed to a public part of your home that you need to insulate it... or is the equipment going to be in a closet/small room shut up most of the time?

Clay pads are little squares that are about 1/16" thick, and are meant for sealing off electrical outlets for noise, and fire. They remain pliable like silly putty, and can be easi,you removed at anytime.

Our equipment room will be behind the rear wall of the theater, will be a atrium. The atrium will be inside our home, and will have a partition conceiling the audio equipment from view. The plants in the atrium will get their light from a skylight, and will have no access to the outside of the house. It will have a glass wall around it plus a glass door, with the walls being maybe 6' tall. This will allow the plants to provide the healthy aspects we need with my health needs, and at the same time allowing the heat to rise from the equipment to the high ceilings. When I was looking at homes built like this it felt like the air conditioning was on...even though there was no air conditioning or fans in the house. If you are interested, I can send you a link that talks about designing a healthy home. I found it interesting about using plants to reduce ions, and create a healthy environment to live and breathe in..

 

[Sonnie]

We are plant freaks... but yeah... shoot me the link... sounds interesting.

Are you talking about putty pads: https://www.amazon.com/ATS-Acoustic...TF8&qid=1495145662&sr=8-3&keywords=putty+pads

 

[NBPK402]

Yup, I bought mine from a local electrical supply house. The Grey ones were the least expensive ones... the red ones were a little bit thicker, and a little more expensive.

Here is a link...

 

[Peter Loeser]

That sounds really pleasant Ron. What are typical summer/winter temps where you'll be building?

 

[NBPK402]

That sounds really pleasant Ron. What are typical summer/winter temps where you'll be building?

40f to 70f is the average daily temp year round. I went there during the hottest time of the year and it hit the mid 80s. I have seen it hit the low 90s as a max. The hottest Temps for the year are March through the end of May. The rest of the year is cooler. It is at around 5000', with a arid climate. I was told one year they got snow, but it just covered the ground and didn't last more than a day. Essentially it is like living on the coast of northern California without the earthquakes or high priced real estate. For us the weather is perfect year round, and the cost of living is less than anywhere I have ever lived in the USA. Utilities are under $ 100 a month, and food will be under $100 a week for the 2 of us, and our 4 dogs, and a cat which all eat human food. We eat pretty much non processed food with everything being healthy. One friend said food will be less than 1/4 to 1/3 what we currently pay...essentially a perfect retirement area. I went out every day, and spent less than 180 pesos in excellent restaurants for each meal. I could have saved more money but I ate in the nice restaurants, and bars. I think the most expensive item on the menu was around 350 pesos. The exchange rate was $100 for 1800 pesos.

 

[NBPK402]

How important this is getting the measurements of the golden rule down to less than an inch? I ran the program Sonnie linked and I selected #3 for my room...the dimensions are 14.375H x 23W x 33.49375L? I am thinking 14x23x33 to give the architech...is that close enough?

 

[NBPK402]

Wondering how to treat the floor without wall to wall carpet, as I don't want any VOCs. I have read that they are bad for 72 hours, but the VOCs are still bad for people in my health for years. I was wondering if buying some old wool rugs would work, and if it would...where would I place them... In front of the speakers to stop first reflections from each channel?

 

[Peter Loeser]

I wouldn't worry about getting your dimensions within an inch of the calculated ones. Your contractor doesn't likely want to be bothered with that small of a tolerance anyway.

Rugs should be a fine solution to treating the floor if you don't want carpet. Placement in front of the mains as you said would help with reflections. Beyond that I would decide based on aesthetics and comfort.

 

[NBPK402]

I wouldn't worry about getting your dimensions within an inch of the calculated ones. Your contractor doesn't likely want to be bothered with that small of a tolerance anyway.

Rugs should be a fine solution to treating the floor if you don't want carpet. Placement in front of the mains as you said would help with reflections. Beyond that I would decide based on aesthetics and comfort.

Thanks Todd, that makes it much easier to finish the room then... just get rugs for the first, and then I will get the thickest rugs I can find to get as far down in frequency as possible.

 

[NBPK402]

I am working on the wiring for my new amp, and have a question... we are using mil-spec twisted pair silver clad wiring. We are using 26, and 28awg for the rca's cables with 16awg mil spec twisted pair silver clad for the internal speaker wiring...

Would it be best to run one twisted pair for the positive, and another for the negative, or just run one side for the positive, and the other for the negative?

 

[Sonnie]

If it's 16 gauge you should be fine running one pair for pos/neg. I think what I have in my walls and ceiling is the CL3 rated 14awg wire, but 16awg should be fine for any run under 50ft. If you get over 50ft, I might then recommend stepping up to 14awg. If you want your mains speaker wire to look a bit nicer, you could consider running dual pairs to those and perhaps cover them with some nice tech flex coming out of the wall to the speakers. I purchased quite a bit of the various colored tech flex off of ebay shipped from Hong Kong and China on the super cheap. I build all my own power cords to the appropriate length using tech flex and it makes them look nicer.

 

[NBPK402]

Thanks Sonnie, this is for internal amp wiring so I am mainly concerned with noise for now. If this mil-spec silver clad wire works out, I might buy more and use it for wiring to each speaker too though. I have about 300 feet of it now for internal amp wiring for 14 channels of in the amp, cables to the breakout box, and for internal wiring in the breakout box. I hope to have it up and wired in the next week or two, then we will see how it sounds for the new Synergy speakers. I can get the silver clad mil-spec wire up to 12awg, but I have heard it sounds better with smaller gauge wires. The advantage is supposedly more extended highs with silver wire. I can't afford pure silver speaker wire...hence trying out the silver clad mil spec wire. I figure the big difference for me even if it doesn't sound design is it will not corrode...so in theory it should sound the same even with time, plus it was not expensive to try out. For speaker runs I will definitely get sheathing if I go this route. I will post up pics of the amp wired, and the sheathed wires between the amp, and breakout box.

 

[Sonnie]

I would probably use some sort of shielded wire for RCA runs in the wall, and 16awg or that is extremely beefy.

The gauge of the wire won't make any difference in the sound... anyone selling you on that is selling you snake oil.

That is obviously provided it is sufficient size... you would not want to run 22awg wire 50ft for speaker wire... not sure if it would carry the sound... it might, but there could be issues.

 

[NBPK402]

Thanks Sonnie, the 26awg will be for the preamp inputs on the power amp to the amp modules, and the MiniDSP 2x4s. The 16awg will be from the MiniDSP 2x4s to the amps, and also to the amp out Speakon connectors to the breakout box. We won't have any in wall connections for the speakers. The amp rack will be in another room adjoining the HT, and will only have speaker wires running through a piece of conduit 1' long ( the walls will be 1' thick clay walls, and I could make anot her panel for Speakon connectors which would make it a bit easier for the wires, but would mean another connector for each speaker). I might just buy Monoprice Speakon 12 awg cables for all my speaker runs if the silver clad doesn'the make any difference. I have never been a believer of the wire making a difference unless it was a compatibility issue...ie. running a tube preamp witha solid state amp where the output impedance of a preamp is not properly matched to the input impedance of the amp. I found this out years ago with a Audible Illusions tube preamp, and a solid state power amp.. when we had that setup we had dramatic differences in cable sound. Once I moved on to a Classe Audio DR6 Preamp, and DR10 power amps in mono I found all you needed was a good quality cable.

On this build I am trying to make it sound as good as possible while looking at bit trick, and still costing less than buying a manufactured amp. We will soon see if my idea pays off. I know so far I like the way the amp is looking...we will see if it works next. If it does I might build another one for 4 more channels. The 2nd amp would be for 4 more bi-amped Synergy speakers for surrounds. We also will see if the 100wpc amps are enough for the woofers in a large room. If not I will swap out the 100wpc amps for 250wpc IcePower modules. I am confident that the 50wpc modules will be more than needed for the EV DH1A drivers.

 

[Sonnie]

Certainly sounds like you are doing it right. Please do share some pics with us. You might even try out our new AV Showcase gallery where you can post construction build projects as well.

 

[NBPK402]

Writing this up tonight made me think twice about the breakout box... I think the breakout box should be a module that will fit into the 1' thick walls. Then it will have the connectors for 4 subs, 4 bi-amped surrounds, 4 Atmos channels, 3 bi-amped front channels, and possibly 2 biamped width channels. Attached are the preliminary mockups pics of the new amp which is being made from a Elan multichannel amp I gutted.








I will post up some pics with the modules installed later...the top will be clear plexiglass to show off the wiring.

 

[NBPK402]

I just found this on Pinterest today, and it got me wondering...
What would happen if I made my front wall like this with 2 huge horn subs, and then had my front 3 channels in front of the builtin subs...with the equipment in the area in between the 2 subs, and covered with a AT Screen? I know this is a totally over the top setup .

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

Interesting. I wonder what the things sticking up from the floor are? Lights?

 

[NBPK402]

Interesting. I wonder what the things sticking up from the floor are? Lights?

I think you are right... unless they are mics for testing. All I know is they said the bass is effortless. I posted a comment to see if more info was available.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

It certainly is an interesting build and clever way to use the room.

 

[NBPK402]

It makes me wonder how it would compare to using my 2 DTS10 subs, and adding 2 more versus that setup...especially since my room will be close to 5' larger in each dimension.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

You would almost have to have some measurements of the system to make meaningful comparisons. Without knowing what drivers are used, especially so. It is hard to predict the effective coupling of the speakers to the room in a configuration that is like a horn, particularly an asymmetrical installation like this.

 

[NBPK402]

You would almost have to have some measurements of the system to make meaningful comparisons. Without knowing wh7at drivers are used, especially so. It is hard to predict the effective coupling of the speakers to the room in a configuration that is like a horn, particularly an asymmetrical installation like this.

So I am better off to just add 2 more DTS10s? I even thought of doing a IB setup with a clay room behind the screen, and have all my equipment in there.

 

[Leonard Caillouet]

I would stick with what you know. If you double what you have, you will add 3dB of capability. If you could make a horn you might get that much more. But horns can be hard to build and hard to model...
With respect to IB, I don't know how your existing woofers would behave in that kind of setup, but my guess is you might end up spending a lot more on drivers.

 

[NBPK402]

Thanks Leonard... I will see if I can make 2 more DTS10s when we get the new HT built. I think 2 more should be plenty for the new room. I was just thinking the horn would be awesome if it worked out...plus would not take much power to hit reference levels. Smarter minds than mine prevail.