Audioholics Showcase Home Overview

It’s been about two years since the Audioholics Showcase home was built and we’ve already had a major system overhaul which mostly affected the main theater room. While there are those that can consider reviewers lucky because we get to try out all of the latest gear the industry has to offer, as Audioholics we often find ourselves getting attached to equipment that we really like and swapping out old gear for new can be more of a hassle then it’s worth. Parting with old gear can be such sweet sorrow but we usually find a way to keep the “golden” gear integrated into our systems. With that in mind, let’s take a tour of the Audioholics Showcase home as of 2008.

We begin with our journey upstairs towards the Main Theater room. As you walk up the stairs, you will be greeted with memorable movie posters hung on the wall to put you in the mood for watching a great movie. Wanna comedy romance, try 50 First Dates, or fantasy, try Narnia; what about if youʼre just hanging with the boys and wanna watch Goodfellaʼs? With nearly 500 DVDʼs, 100's of HD & Blu-ray DVD's, SACD's and DVD-A's, in our collection, weʼve got you covered.

The Main Theater Room

This is the Audioholics “reference” room where we do flagship product reviews and conduct our yearly speaker face off reviews. The reason is this room is acoustically the best sounding theater room among our staff reference systems. Auralex sent a crew of two whom spent nearly 14 hours/day for 4 days treating this room to achieve the best possible sound in this listening space. After Auralex was done, we added customized curtains built to block out the light from the windows and also carry that theater theme throughout the room. We also painted the ceiling black, again for light control. To finish the look of the room, we installed some sconces we got at Home Depot and a dimmer switch from Leviton.

See the Auralex Treatment Plan for the Audioholics Showcase Home

Since this is truly the Audioholics “reference” room, it is also where only the very best gear gets admission to be part of the primary reference system – one of the perks of being company President :)

The Video Side

While the Yamaha LPX-510 LCD projector was one of the best LCD projectors back in the day, it was time to step up to the plate and get a true 1080p projector in this room. Thus we called on our friends at Epson to secure their new 1080UB LCD model which incidentally was showcased for the very first time last year at the Audioholics 2007 State of the CE Union Tradeshow event. This is a very competent projector in the sub $6k price range, has excellent black level and comes pretty well calibrated out of the box. Of course, we had Clint come over to calibrate it to ISF standards.

A Da-Lite Cinema Contour 106” screen is being utilized to eek out the best black levels the Epson LCD projector can offer. You will also notice the Furman power conditioner strapped to the ceiling. This is plugged directly into a dedicated 20A line and feed to the projector. This is an essential measure to protect your projector from surges and low line conditions which tend to wreck havoc on lamp life. If we had the chance to do it over again, we would have instead run the power line directly to our APC S20s that offer battery backup and line regulation as well.

The Audio Side

The Denon AVP-A1HDCI and POA-A1HDCI separates solution from Denon were recently integrated into this system. As indicated in our review, the AVP-A1HDCI is in our opinion the most advanced pre/pro on the market. The matching POA-A1HDCI 10 channel amplifier is no slouch either, and we love the way the two integrate like peas and carrots together thanks to the Denon link connection.

In our review of the AVP-A1HDCI, we noted the volume scaling issue we were occasionally having when engaging Audyssey with Pro Logic IIx on low level recorded sources. In addition, we wern’t happy with the calibration results thus we bypassed the internal Audyssey system. and instead have decided to continue using the Audyssey standalone MultEQ processor with customized curve editor software built especially for us (not released so don’t ask) for the subwoofer channels. Rest assured however that when Denon releases the Audyssey curve editor software this fall for the AVP-A1HDCI, we will be giving it another try. The ability to customize your response curves is the best way to dial in an exacting room response. This is especially true when you’re not using all identical subwoofers ideally located throughout the room and assuming you’ve got the right calibration measurement tools on hand to validate your results.

Velodyne DD-15+s located to the side and back walls

We’ve got the dual 10” subs in the T-30LSE’s and two additional Velodyne DD-15s configured as mono/LFE so all 4 subs are playing the exact same signal crossed over at 80Hz. With optimal placement, proper configuration, and usage of the Audyssey system, I am happy to report we have achieved a +-5dB response from 12Hz to 200Hz across all of the listening seats. This was no easy feat and took us nearly a half day of grueling calibration, measurement and analysis to realize. Seeing how the AVP-A1HDCI has 3 independent subwoofer outputs, it was relatively easy for us to properly set levels and distances for each sub to ensure optimal blending with respect to each other and the main speakers.

We wanted to make sure the RBH Sound T-30LSE reference towers had plenty of power feeding them so we configured the POA-A1HDCI as bridged for the sub drivers which were assigned as subwoofer 1 and subwoofer 2 in the processor. We then bridged the center channel. You’re probably wondering how we are powering all 7 channels with this amp if we are bridging 6 of the 10 channels. The answer is… We’re not! The POA-A1HDCI is using 6 of its amplifiers to power the T-30LSE towers, 2 for the matching T-1/SER center channel and 2 for the side channels (66-SE/R’s). The SI-740 back channels are being powered with the Emotiva RPA-1 amplifier, another “golden” product that is too good to let go considering its asking price.

Before we installed the Denon separates solution, we were using the venerable AVR-5805 to power the main zone and also serve 5.1 audio into the bedroom system. This receiver is one of those “golden” pieces of gear that could not simply be hocked off on eBay or given away. We needed to find a purpose for it in the new order….and we have!

Dual Theater Zones

We setup a secondary theater system in this room using the AVR-5805mkII in the center of it all. The main zone of this receiver will be used for conducting loudspeaker reviews with the ability to bi-amp the front channels if necessary, or power a completely independent and pre-wired 5.1 theater in this room. This makes our job a lot easier as we don’t have to mess with recalibrating the control system each time we test out new speakers. The second zone of the AVR-5805mkII will serve the same function it did before - powering the bedroom system.

The Racks

The primary rack in this room is from Middle Atlantic and stands nearly 7ft tall. It’s truly a unique rack in that it has a built in wire management system and slides out on rails to make servicing equipment easier. This rack is built like a tank and can hold up to 2500lbs. This is a good thing because when all of the equipment was tallied up, it weighed in at roughly 650lbs. It seems our primary reference system gets heavier with each upgrade so it's nice to know we’ve got some wiggle room for the future. Currently the Middle Atlantic rack houses the Denon AVP-A1HDCI Pre/Pro and POA-A1HDCI matching 10CH amplifier, Denon DVD-5910CI Universal DVD player, RBH SAM-400 subwoofer amplifier (powers bedroom system in-wall subwoofers), Audyssey MultEQ Pro processor, 2 APC AV S20s (each separately run to dedicated 20A lines) and 2 APC AV SBATTs. With all of this power protection and battery backup (no Florida thunder storm can threaten this system and there’s enough juice to power the entire theater for nearly two hours should we lose power). Yes we’ve got our priorities straight! This is the room we go to during brown outs.

The secondary rack is an Audiav Crystal which is elegant and also extremely sturdy; capable of holding the heaviest gear the industry has to offer. In this rack, resides the Denon AVR-5805mkii, Yamaha MCX-2000 MusicCAST, Xbox 360, our “golden” Sony CDP-CA-8ES CD changer which has graced this reference system for over 10 years, Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player and Verizon FIOS Motorola HD DVR.

The Cables

You won’t find any cable snake oil in our systems; just the most durable and best measuring cable products dawn all of the systems in the Audioholics showcase home. For speaker cables we used Blue Jeans CL2 approved 10AWG speaker cable throughout the entire house, including all of the in-wall pre-wires and outdoor speakers. The interconnects are all Bluejeans 1694A with Canare terminations. All of the digital toslink and HDMI cables are Impact Acoustics Sonicwave.

The Theater Chairs & Riser Platform

To round out the room, we carefully selected what we feel to be some of the best home theater chairs on the market. These chairs are from Continental Seating and are some of the most comfortable reclining theater chairs we’ve ever sat on. They are a micro fiber design which have better acoustical properties than leather and prevents sweat build up from prolonged sitting typically experienced with leather. They are also very easy to keep clean. Most importantly, the contoured headrest ensures they don’t muffle the sound or block off your surround speakers like most theater chairs tend to.

We built a custom riser to raise the height of the back row while also designing it to serve as a bass trap and natural tactile transducer which really adds a lot of excitement during depth charges in U-571 and other explosive movies. If you haven't considered building a riser platform for your theater and you've got more than one row, we strongly encourage you to reconsider.

See: Building a Multi Function Riser Platform

Also see: Tips on calibrating a Multi Row Theater and Multi Subwoofer Connections Guide

The Remote Solution

For the remote solution, we went with an RTI T3 RF Universal Controller. RTI offers some of the most robust remote solutions on the market but aren’t very user friendly for programming. Thus the services of Dave Serrano from www.onlyoneremote.com were called upon to custom program the remote. Dave got us up and running so that this single remote can control the entire theater room and can also be used in the master bedroom downstairs to control that system as well. This was no easy task as we had to install two RF antennas to span the distance of the house and he had to do a lot of customized programming and macro editing to operate both systems with the simple touch of a button while also not interfering with each other since the primary processor components in that room are all Denon. WIth the two antennas paralleled and located at different areas, we can control these systems from any location in the house.

Test Lab

A separate test lab was created in the theater room which has 6 COAX and Ethernet connections directly tied into the main theater room. When we do high SPL testing of loudspeakers, we typically setup the test equipment in the theater room, and run like hell into the test lab, slamming the door shut before the first sweep blows us out of the room.

The test lab consists of some of the industries finest measurement equipment including:

• Audio Precision APx585 8-channel HDMI Audio Analyzer (for receiver/amplifier/Blu-ray measurements)
• Wayne Kerr 6420 Magnetic Analyzer (cable and loudspeaker coil measurements)
• Sencore SP495 Audio Analyzer (room and loudspeaker measurements)
• Sencore SC3100 Oscilloscope
  
• LMS (room and loudspeaker measurements)

All of this equipment is protected by an APC S15 which is run to a dedicated 20A line.

Suffice it to say with this level of precision, we can measure the noise level increase on a piece of gear if a nearby gnat in the room decides to break wind.

Audioholics Rock Band?

Not quite, though when we’re not doing Audioholics related stuff in this room, some of us are enjoying our flirtations at being amateur drummers and keyboard players. The keyboard is a Yamaha DGX-500 and the drum kit is Roland TD-V6. We normally use a pair of Swan T-200 computer speakers for the drums which surprisingly do a fantastic job with plenty of volume and bass extension. On occasion, we are daring enough to connect up the keyboard and drums to the theater system and crank it up (Back to the Future style) while attempting to play along with our favorite musicians.

The End Result

This room is nearly a ¼ million dollar investment and is a collaboration of some of the finest home theater equipment in an ideal acoustical environment which allows us to discern the quality of components we evaluate in comparison. During off duty hours, we also get to enjoy an unparalleled theater experience that rivals all of the local Cineplex’s. Since we are audiophiles at heart, this system was designed and to favor the audio side of the equation more than anything else. As a result, watching a high quality multi-channel concert performance or listening to a great DVD-A such as the Beatles- Love, really provides us that “better than being there” experience. It’s also very enjoyable to see and hear Clint and Tom’s last cries of death just as I stick them with a grenade in Halo 3 or headshot them with the sniper riffle.