Today, we’re super excited to show you a near-field home theater that we recently installed in a relatively compact bonus room. While we have many home theater showcases, the majority of them cover homes with dedicated theater rooms. The reality is that many people don’t have that kind of extra space available, but still want to create a cinematic experience in their homes. In this showcase, we’re going to show you how you can put a terrific theater in a more compact space, such as a bonus room, living room, or larger bedroom. Check out the full video where we take a look at what the space looked like before we started installing, a full time-lapse of the install, and then we’ll demo a few clips to see how well it performs.
We worked with the homeowner and extensively weighed the pros and cons of a projection theater versus one of our larger top-of-the-line Sony TVs. Due to the size of the room, the viewing distance, and in order to maximize the homeowner's budget, a Sony KD-85X91J 85” Full LED Array 4K Television was chosen. The A91J series of televisions have a much higher brightness level compared to other televisions in a similar price range. To ensure a cinema-like experience, we needed the contrast that the A91J provides and really good motion flow. The KD-85X91J provides a better pop with HDR, and selecting a television over a front-projection system allows us to focus the budget on the audio.
This is a full 5.1.2 setup and because of the compact nature of the room, we wanted to use on-wall speakers to free up space rather than in-room box speakers. We used Heco on-walls which provide terrific performance for the price. In particular, the Fluctus tweeter in these gives us wide dispersion to fully cover the seats as you can see in our home theater design tool. We used the Heco Ambient 44F 2-Way Dual 5” On-Wall Speakers for the front left, right, and center, and then used the Heco Ambient 22F On-Wall Speakers for the surrounds. They both utilize 5” midrange drivers with forward-firing ports so we can get real power and bass that you typically don’t get with an on-wall speaker. If you want to learn more about Heco speakers, we have an entire Heco comparison & review detailing the various models available.
An Integra DRX 4.3 9.2-Channel 4K Network A/V Receiver was chosen to provide high-performance audio and allows them to take advantage of Dolby Atmos and every major surround sound format for watching movies, tv, and gaming. This has 100 watts per channel of super clean sound. You have to be very careful when looking at specs as oftentimes, cheap receivers or processors will quote super high watts per channel but those watts are either at high distortion rates or at peak delivery. You usually get what you pay for. Integra uses very robust power supplies along with large capacitors so you can go from extremely quiet to virtually instant impact scenes. The Integra also has great digital-to-analog converters to bring full uncompressed sound throughout the room. The final advantage of using the Integra is how well designed it is for control systems. We’ll touch on this a bit later.
The other cool thing in this room is that we have two MartinLogan IC6 in-ceiling atmos speakers providing full 3 dimension spatial effects. The Integra also upscales non-atmos content to take advantage of the entire set of speakers in the room. If you are doing this yourself, make sure that you angle your atmos speaker toward the primary listening position. Our home theater tool will actually show you exactly where to put the speaker in the room depending on whether you have 2, 4, or 6 atmos speakers.
To fill out the sound side, we are using an SVS SB-3000 subwoofer. This is a super powerful 13” subwoofer with 800 watts of continuous power but able to surpass 2,500 peak watts during explosions and other high-impact scenes. We corner-loaded the room by placing it in the back right corner next to the rack. The SVS subs are super high excursion which means they can really move an enormous amount of air and get down to 18hz, so a subsonic level that you will feel. But they do this while starting and stopping on a dime which is what makes them so great. This cleaned up the front of the room and then we utilized the SVS app to calibrate the sub for the room.
We then used the AccuEQ calibration system on the Integra to calibrate the entire system of speakers. This system conducts two measurements — one is to set speaker levels and the second sets the distances and crossover points. Once we had the SVS dialed in, the AccuEQ then blended all of the speakers together into one cohesive surround sound system. If you want to learn more about Integra receivers and AccuEQ, check out our full comparison & overview of the Integra DRX series.
This is a family of four so we have Revolution Home Theater Seating for every family member. These chairs are unique in that you can get them all of the way up to 8” off the back wall and still do a full recline. These are by far our number one selling chair nationwide. You first set your recline level and then you set the headrest so it puts your head at the correct angle, no matter how far you recline. These chairs also feature a dimmable LED light in the cupholder and on the floor that is ideal for movie watching so you don’t put light on the television but still have enough to grab your drink or go to the restroom. It also has memory buttons and a USB charger built-in as well.
Revolution Home Theater Seating - RowOne
For this homeowner's AV Rack, they chose a beautiful walnut Salamander Synergy Model 402 AV Cabinet. Positioned in a nook just to the side of the Revolution seating, it makes it easy to access to put in a BluRay but still keeps everything out of the walkway and sightlines in the room. Salamander AV racks are designed specifically for audio/video equipment. They have the right depth, width, and airflow to hold and protect equipment correctly and we choose the right size based upon the amount of equipment in your system. If you are building your own system, be sure to check out our video on how to design and set up an audio/video rack.
The sources in the AV Rack include a Sony UBP-X800M2 4K UHD Blu-ray Player, Apple TV 4K, and a cable box.
The room has the advantage of plush carpet and the Revolution chairs, which do a good job of absorbing upper frequencies. However, to really maximize the sound, we wanted more absorption on the back wall that is very close to the seat and at key first reflections on the ceiling and side. You’ll see that we’ve used Vicoustic Cinema Round panels combined with Vicoustic Multifuser DC3 diffusers to break up frequencies. The combination really makes the room sound great.
Finally, we wanted this room to be super easy to control. We used a Control4 EA-1 universal remote. The homeowner simply hits the watch button on the remote, chooses the source, and the system turns everything on to the right level and then one button turns everything off. Both the Sony and the Integra are designed to be easily integrated into a control system. We also used a Control4 dimmer and set lighting scenes for totally on or watching a movie with the system.
Formula 1 on Netflix is a really cool series, especially if you have a home theater. It is recorded with Atmos. The roar of the engines will put any room to a test. Because of the compact nature of the room and the audio system, it literally immerses you into the vehicles as if you were there. The SVS sub does a superb job filling the room.
Our Planet on Netflix is in both Atmos and DolbyVision/HDR10. In this system, you actually get superior visuals than what you would get on a projector-based system when running HDR. If the room were a little bigger, we would advise a projector but for this setup, it’s terrific.
If you are thinking about building a home theater or updating yours, be sure to check out our free 3D home theater designer where you can design your system, see lots of videos of installations like this one, as well as browse our inspiration gallery and how-to videos. At Audio Advice, we've been designing and installing high-performance home theaters & smart home systems for our customers in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, and surrounding areas for decades. In fact, we've delivered more custom theaters than anyone in the Southeast! We are now offering Home Theater Design no matter where you live in the United States. If you are interested in a custom home theater or upgrading your current system, give us a call at 888.899.8776, chat with us, or stop by one of our award-winning showrooms. We can't wait to help you build your ultimate home theater!
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