Show off your entertainment system!

[Reese Riverson]

Here's the photo.

Nowhere as cool as Hoodcom's or Pirez's, but there's a PS2, Wii, PS3, PS4, Apple TV and sound system (if you can call it that after seeing Hoodcom's). Everything's plugged in and ready for use.

Awesome! Glad you finally posted it as well Hunch.

Hey, I'm sure the sound system still beats the built in TV speakers. Just because I have a big-ass system doesn't mean yours isn't called a sound system.

[PluMGMK]

Well, it's certainly very elegant!

[Hunchman801]

Hey, I'm sure the sound system still beats the built in TV speakers.

It sure does, and I don't really need more.

Well, it's certainly very elegant!

Thanks.

[Reese Riverson]

I figured since there really isn't anything to tackle this, and Hunchman's picture inspired me to do so, I feel we should have a thread dedicated to allow fellow [...]

Well howdy howdy folks, it's been a while since I've given any updates on my own system, and hopefully this will inspire anyone else to show off their system! My system has gone through several updates since the date of the OP. Honestly the journey is not over yet. More planned upgrades and changes are in the works, even with my slow ass.

Let's start with an updated system overview!
--- System Overview ---

Speakers consist of:

• The Elusive 1099 (LCR)
• Volt-10 LX (Rear Sides and Rear Backs)
• Volt-6 (Top Front and Top Rear Overhead for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X)
• Dual Othorns with 21" B&C 21SW152-4 drivers (LFE) [28Hz and Up]
• Dual 8FT³ dual opposed enclosures with 18" Dayton RSS460HO drivers. (LFE) [32Hz and Below]
• Dual 11FT³. dual opposed enclosures with 21" Incriminator Audio Judge drivers. (LFE) [32Hz and Below]
• 8FT³ enclosure with two 18" Stereo Integrity HT-18 V2 subwoofers for nearfield. (LFE) [32Hz and Below]

Powered by:

• AudioControl Maestro X7 (7.1.4 channel surround sound currently)
• Behringer DCX2496 Digital Crossover for the Subwoofer DSP management needs.
• Crest Audio CC4000 (Left and Right 1099)
• Crest Audio CC2800 (Center 1099 and Rear Nearfield Dual 18" Subwoofers.)
• SpeakerPower SP2-12000 - (Powering the Quad 21" Incriminator Audio Judge Subwoofers.
• Crown Audio DCi 8|600N - (Powering the four bed layer surrounds and four overhead Atmos surrounds)
• Crown Audio DCi 4|2400N - (Bridged Mode to deliver 4200 Watts per Othorn.)
• Peavey IPR2 5000 (Quad Dayton 18" subwoofers.)

I won't update the video game system list or misc equipment for now. Future expansion is in the works, such as adding my Crown DCi 4|600N and additional surround channels. I am going to add some of DIYSoundgroup's HT-88 Specials as my Front Wides and I'll be adding another layer of overheads for Dolby Atmos. What currently serves as the Top Height Rear will become Top Height Middle and then when I add the unistrut channel I'll be adding the new Volt-6s as the Top Height Rear. This will make the system a 9.1.6 channel system.

The next big project is relocating the audio rack from where it sits now into a space within my closet. There is a bit of a 'cavity' between that closet and the room my computer equipment is in. That allows some duct work to go from the first floor into the attic. This is a two-story house. Basically I can just open up the wall, like I'm adding a door, but instead of a door there it'll be a nice full sized 48U enclosed audio rack.

I wanted to toy with the idea of stuffing an enclosed server rack, but that unfortunately won't fit due to the limited depth. So I can't take my servers and move them there too, not without getting ones that don't go as deep anyway. The networking equipment wouldn't be a problem... So I might have to do some thinking here.

Anyway, I did model a few things up in Blender to get an idea of this will fit, and so far so good. I'll post more about that later.

Another upgrade I'm doing is I'm going to be adding a couple of 24" subwoofers into the system. There's a Canadian company making some really nice drivers that do offer them to the DIY community called Harbottle Audio, and they make some really nice drivers. So these will either be replacing my nearfield rear subwoofers or be adding to the back of my room in place of my shelves holding up the rear back surround speakers.

Without any further ado, here are the pictures! (Please note, some are old pictures still - Also you can click them for a larger view.)

Here is the view of the existing 18U audio rack, it's still a work in progress, but I will likely not complete this as I listed the plans to change things over above (Also I had to swap a couple of amps around that are not fully pictured here):


Full view of the front, this is an older picture but you get the idea:


The nearfield 18" subwoofers behind the sofa:


The front overhead Atmos... older picture:


The rear overhead Atmos along with my DIY acoustic panels with my characters on them:


The rear back surrounds along with my DIY acoustic panels with my characters on them:


Rear Side Left Surround, Games, Movies, and Doggo:


Rear Side Right Surround and game consoles:


Rear Side Right Surround and game consoles 2:


That's it for now! Let's see some of y'alls stuff now!

[Master]

Jesus Reese, I remember you sharing your setup with me in the past but it's sounding like you've done a lot since the last time we spoke on this xD

How have you been putting this all together then? I remember you mentioning that you had to assemble those speakers by hand, did you end up having to use any special materials to seal them, or is it just good ol' foam?

Also damn those speakers on the ceiling look quite tidy, did you have to measure up and cut those mounts yourself?

Heh it looks quite stunning seeing all that hardware in one place, y'all audiophiles are something else

[Reese Riverson]

Jesus Reese, I remember you sharing your setup with me in the past but it's sounding like you've done a lot since the last time we spoke on this xD

How have you been putting this all together then? I remember you mentioning that you had to assemble those speakers by hand, did you end up having to use any special materials to seal them, or is it just good ol' foam?

Also damn those speakers on the ceiling look quite tidy, did you have to measure up and cut those mounts yourself?

Heh it looks quite stunning seeing all that hardware in one place, y'all audiophiles are something else

What can I say, I'm an enthusiast for home audio, and I always have been since I was a little kid! A lot has changed since then, yes!

As far as most of these speakers go, I did get flatpacks for, which are pre-cut material that simply needed to be assembled. The Othorn subwoofer cabinets, the big ones on the very edges were already DIY'd by a fellow three hours away and I bought them due to the complexity of a tapped horn design of a these subwoofers. Some cabinets I cut the material myself. Most of these cabinets are out of MDF, but I used baltic birch with my dual opposed 21" subwoofers and even the rear 18s, if I remember correctly.

So what seals the cabinets up is basically the wood glue you use during the assembly. Overall you would use wood clamps and/or a brad nail gun to assemble. Wood clamps only would take the longest time, where as if you use those with the brad nail gun you can speed up the assembly since the little nails hold the cabinets together as the glue dries and creates a nice strong bond between the materials.

Here's an example of when I was building the 21" Dual Opposed Cabinets:

For the speakers that mount on the ceiling, I was inspired by a fellow on AVSForum who mounted all of his overhead surrounds with unistrut channel. So bought the strut channel material, using vinegar to help rough up the material so I can apply black paint to it and I drilled my holes where the ceiling joists are and used lag bolts to secure it in place.

I then made up some plans for a machine shop/metal shop locally we deal with for our family business to cut and weld up custom brackets for me so these can be hung up minimal gap between them and the ceiling. My ceiling isn't very high up so I wanted to make the best use of space possible:

You may say I'm an audiophile, but I just am passionate about this stuff. You don't have to be an audiophile to simply enjoy audio or tweak settings in a DSP.

[Steo]

I see you're still putting my own setup to shame!

Just kidding. Some really nice stuff here, and I think the DIY speakers / woofers are really cool. I always liked console collections, and of course as mentioned, I don't have everything set up here as I'm now living in a temporary place. When I settle and have my own house, I'll work on having a better setup and having all my consoles again.

I do remember you showing me a lot of the stuff you had in 2018, and how you were saying your amps would blow up my shitty Logitech speakers!

[Reese Riverson]

I see you're still putting my own setup to shame!

Just kidding. Some really nice stuff here, and I think the DIY speakers / woofers are really cool. I always liked console collections, and of course as mentioned, I don't have everything set up here as I'm now living in a temporary place. When I settle and have my own house, I'll work on having a better setup and having all my consoles again.

I do remember you showing me a lot of the stuff you had in 2018, and how you were saying your amps would blow up my shitty Logitech speakers!

Man Steo, you just won't let me hear the end of it, will you?

Thanks man, yeah DIY is an amazing route to go, especially since you can save a lot of money that way versus commercially made products. For example, one of the speakers I've considered before were by JTR Speakers, great amazing company, but the price is by far much higher than I paid for, for a lot of my speakers.

Haha, I kind of forgot about saying that, but yeah, my amps have a lot of power available.


So here's a screenshot of the WIP I've done with Blender for my closet renovations I'm planning:

[Reese Riverson]

Alright, so there's so much that's gone on since the last update, where things had actually been done with this despite me not really covering much here.


So the first thing I really needed, due to my fear of heights, is not need a ladder to get from the attic space of the second floor to get to the area above the second floor:

So this part of the closet, I did open up, as you can see below:

Here's a shot when wires had began being pulled:

And let me tell you, pulling several large gauge of in-wall wire was a lot of pain, I remember waking up from my arms feeling like they're on fire with as much I had done.


I've got electrical PVC in the space to the attic to keep my speaker wire, networking, and video cables all tidy as possible:

I've gotten metal wall plates from both Infinite Cables and DataPro to house my SpeakON speaker connectors, such as so:

(This one in particular is for the overhead surround speakers)

[Reese Riverson]

Next up, was re-running the dedicated electrical circuits into this space, which conveniently is directly above the utility closet with the breaker panel.

(3 x 240VAC 30A | 1 x 120VAC 30A | 3 x 120VAC 20A)


Once I disassembled the new rack, just to fit it through the doorway of this closet, I reassembled it, and during that, my cat decided to be the perfect helper:

So when my IT buddy came down, he helped me get the rack loaded up, between all the audio amplifiers and the server equipment:

Since the AudioControl Maestro X7 was in this space, in order to use the remote control for it, I ran a cat6 line with a couple of 3.5mm to ethernet adapters so I can have a an IR receiver up with the OLED TV and feed into the repeater here:

Thankfully this worked quite nicely for me!

[Reese Riverson]

However, problems arise when my cat discovered the metal mesh on the rack door is something he can climb:

(That's not meant for you, boy!)


At some point, I plan on installing a couple more subwoofers into the system, two 24" Hartbottle Audio subwoofers to be precise, in an enclosure (Well, a flatpack I have to assemble still) I got from https://shop.gsgad.com/, so here's the amp I have waiting for when I get around to doing that:

This part hasn't been done since the renovations of our house took place for a big chunk of this year, for the first couple of quarters at least.

Though earlier this year, my AudioControl processor decided to go on a fritz with the HDMI section when my friends were over, so I decided to order a Marantz AV10 Pre-Pro, and I've gotten that installed recently:

I haven't got anything fully hooked up or tuned yet, since I'm still debating on how I want to re-do the XLR cable connections between the pre-pro and the amps. I'm highly indecisive right now.


Though the newer additions to the speaker family in my system since the beginning of this year are the 88-Specials as my front wides, from DIYSoundgroup

[Reese Riverson]

I got the new JTR NOESIS 210RM speakers in, and in place:

So far they sound amazing!

[Hunchman801]

It looks so cosy! I love how there's so many speakers that you don't even have a need for actual furniture anymore.

I hope you put this beautiful man cave to good use during the Reese Retreat.