Recently I picked up a 54” Panasonic plasma on sale at sears. Because of that, I needed to start getting my surround sound setup in the living room and this is where my DIY 5.2 setup was going to come in. Well, my speakers I’ve wanted to build have gone almost no where. I don’t have the time available to build them, test a crossover, rebuild them, test new crossover, rebuild if needed, test new crossover, tweak existing crossover, etc…So I needed something that would get me by.

Being the thrifty shopper that I am, I picked up 5 Infinity Beta-20’s while Harman International had them up on ebay for pretty cheap. Then Harman sent me a 6th one free…Error in my favor?

These speakers worked great as some near field monitors, but when it comes to filling a living room sized theater with sound at reference levels (105db at listening position), they need help.



Because I really liked the sound of the Beta-20’s, I figured I’d try out the bigger Beta-50’s. I haven’t had them long, but they’re certainly going handle more power than the B-20’s (duh) and thus put out more sound; Quality wise, too soon to tell; Distortion, should be less than the B-20’s, but I have yet to push them.



Now I just need to get a matching center channel speaker, the Beta-c360. In the mean time, I will use an extra Beta-20.

The speaker setup is all temporary, but the subs I will keep and likely add two (totaling 4) when I build my new speakers.

While my build on a budget isn’t quite done (still need a matching center), I feel I’ve done OK thus far.TV…………....…...…...~$1100 after tax at SearsTV Stand…….……....~$50 after tax at SearsL/R speakers………...$325Center (temp)…....~$47 shippedSurrounds (2)………~$94 shippedReceiver……………...~$300-350 ? Been a few years since I bought it.-------------------------------------------------------Sub total……………..~$1916-1966 (w/o sub and DVD/BRD)

And then budget kind’a went out the window.Subwoofer eq…….........~$225 shippedSubwoofer amp….….....~$500 shippedSubwoofers…….….........~$540 shippedSubwoofer enclosures...$60 in plywood and MDF from Home Depot.BluRay player........….......Not purchased yet.--------------------------------------------------Total with DIY subs......~$3241-3291

Things I still need to do:-Build my second subwoofer enclosure-Build some bass traps and other sound absorption panels for the walls-Get a BluRay player.-Get Win7 installed on my computer.-Insert pictures of things.


Modified by Looneybomber at 6:25 PM 12/28/2009

Sounds awesome Looney!

Are you going to break-in the plasma? I've read some stuff about how you are supposed to run the plasma for so many hours with a special disc...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb...30381

Everyone talks about it, but I've never downloaded it. I've been playing Disney movies on it, so I tend to display a lot of colors...just breaking it in naturally.

I'll likely download it and play it if I ever get image retention from playing games or from the computer.

Curious about your mention of Win7. Are you using a HTPC??

hannibal wrote:Curious about your mention of Win7. Are you using a HTPC??

That's my plan, but as you can see, the torn apart computer is my new (to me last year) computer and I can't get my two drives in a RAID0. DOS won't recognize my flash drive that I put the driver on and I don't have an A: drive, so I'm kind'a stuck. I actually have an A: drive, but my power supply doesn't have an A: power connector so I have to figure that out too...

Pictures ftw!

How do you run the surround wire on your setup in the 2nd pic?

Nice...How do you like the Panasonic? I have the TH50PZ700U 50" plasma and love it. I like it much better with the Pioneer SC-05 doing HDMI up-conversions as well.

marlin29311 wrote:Pictures ftw!

How do you run the surround wire on your setup in the 2nd pic?

I haven't yet. You can see the two surrounds by the fire place.

My options are,-Run the wire under the carpet, which will end up being impossibly hard.-Run the wires on top of the carpet and cover with a large rug (wife says no)-Go inwall with the wiring, but I am in rental property...

audtatious wrote:Nice...How do you like the Panasonic? I have the TH50PZ700U 50" plasma and love it. I like it much better with the Pioneer SC-05 doing HDMI up-conversions as well.

The TV is great. (TC-P54S1) With our viewing distance, I wanted to utilize the 1080p by getting a biggish TV, otherwise with a smaller TV I could have gotten a 720p and been fine...so glad we didn't get a 37"

The screen is the same one used in their THX cert G10, but without the THX picture setting. The green's are a bit too green and I've seen others on the P##S1 owners thread on AVSforum have said the same thing. There's a couple people who have recalibrated their display's in the service menu, but doing so voids the warranty I believe, so I'll wait to do that.

For power consumption, I was worried about getting a plasma over an LCD. Plasma's have a superior picture, but also use more power. The UPS I got, with power conditioning, displays power consumption, that way I know how many watts of it's 900w rating I am using. With the TV on but not displaying anything, it consumes around 60w, but with it displaying nearly an all white screen, it jumps up over 500w. For most content, it's around 200w.

Who cares about power consumption?

Looneybomber wrote:-Run the wire under the carpet, which will end up being impossibly hard.

It's not as hard as you think...as long as you have a long still wire to strand your speaker wire to, you can easly just push underneath of the foam padding underneat...the subfloor won't give you any sliding problems.

marlin29311 wrote:It's not as hard as you think...as long as you have a long still wire to strand your speaker wire to, you can easly just push underneath of the foam padding underneat...the subfloor won't give you any sliding problems.

I'm just envisioning myself trying to pull the thingy under the carpet with the wire attached to it and snagging on it the entire way, ripping chunks of padding as I go. That is, if I can even push it through in a strait line from the back of the room to the receiver. I think that will be the hardest part.

When I had my carpet put in earlier this year the installer cut channels for the speaker wires. Worked like a champ.

Looneybomber wrote:Recently I picked up a 54” Panasonic plasma on sale at sears. Because of that, I needed to start getting my surround sound setup in the living room and this is where my DIY 5.2 setup was going to come in. Well, my speakers I’ve wanted to build have gone almost no where. I don’t have the time available to build them, test a crossover, rebuild them, test new crossover, rebuild if needed, test new crossover, tweak existing crossover, etc…So I needed something that would get me by.

Being the thrifty shopper that I am, I picked up 5 Infinity Beta-20’s while Harman International had them up on ebay for pretty cheap. Then Harman sent me a 6th one free…Error in my favor?

These speakers worked great as some near field monitors, but when it comes to filling a living room sized theater with sound at reference levels (105db at listening position), they need help.



Because I really liked the sound of the Beta-20’s, I figured I’d try out the bigger Beta-50’s. I haven’t had them long, but they’re certainly going handle more power than the B-20’s (duh) and thus put out more sound; Quality wise, too soon to tell; Distortion, should be less than the B-20’s, but I have yet to push them.



Now I just need to get a matching center channel speaker, the Beta-c360. In the mean time, I will use an extra Beta-20.

The speaker setup is all temporary, but the subs I will keep and likely add two (totaling 4) when I build my new speakers.

While my build on a budget isn’t quite done (still need a matching center), I feel I’ve done OK thus far.TV…………....…...…...~$1100 after tax at SearsTV Stand…….……....~$50 after tax at SearsL/R speakers………...$325Center (temp)…....~$47 shippedSurrounds (2)………~$94 shippedReceiver……………...~$300-350 ? Been a few years since I bought it.-------------------------------------------------------Sub total……………..~$1916-1966 (w/o sub and DVD/BRD)

And then budget kind’a went out the window.Subwoofer eq…….........~$225 shippedSubwoofer amp….….....~$500 shippedSubwoofers…….….........~$540 shippedSubwoofer enclosures...$60 in plywood and MDF from Home Depot.BluRay player........….......Not purchased yet.--------------------------------------------------Total with DIY subs......~$3241-3291

Things I still need to do:-Build my second subwoofer enclosure-Build some bass traps and other sound absorption panels for the walls-Get a BluRay player.-Get Win7 installed on my computer.-Insert pictures of things.


Modified by Looneybomber at 6:25 PM 12/28/2009

That looks awesome:)

Alright, I’ve had some changes come about.

My HTPC is up and running just fine! I have a 38.3GB .ts file of Avatar (34mbps avg bitrate) and it plays awesome thanks to TMT3 with hardware acceleration enabled. I have a thread about the software here.
movie-playing-software-for-pc-s-t492236.html

The matching Infinity Beta-c360 center is too small. The wife doesn’t want the TV sitting on the speaker that either isn’t as wide as the TV or TV stand. It looks kind of silly having a 54” tv sitting on a speaker that is only around 2ft wide. So the wife said I must go bigger!

Well I finally found a center that will work for me, so long as I modify the design a little, i.e. make it wider. It’s a DIY kit that comes with the drivers and crossover. The enclosure and everything that goes into creating an enclosure is up to the buyer. There are certain guidelines that must be met, for example, driver spacing, location, and baffle height must be kept the same. Enclosure width, depth, and volume can be changed within reason. My wife’s friend has a cabinetry shop with a 3-axis CNC machine, so I’m trying to work with him on getting an awesome enclosure built, but right now he’s having software issues. Who knows when I’ll be able to start building the enclosure?

These are NOT my speakers, but is a shot of the finished kits so you can get an idea on how big the center is. The center pictured is around 43" wide, but I will have to make it a tad over 4ft according to my wife, then mount the TV to the wall.

http://clearwave.forumotion.net/cld-bui ... ild-t5.htm

This brings me to my next change. Since I am going with a completely different center, my other speakers need to match it, so I will be getting new L/R’s later after completing my center channel build. And I am also going to be gone for a year or so for military stuff so I am selling pretty much everything I have audio wise and will start all over again when I get back; sans center, sub amp and pre/pro, and a few other things.





I already sold my 2, 15" woofers I was going to use for my previous speaker build and also one of my 15" subwoofers. I still have my 4, 12" subwoofers I was going to use for my "swimming pool" build that I'm now not going to do. (gotta have bass for pool parties right! ) I'm going to try to sell those too, but if they don't, I'll keep them to use in my HT.

The 4, 12's are on the right hand side. 15" woofers in the middle, 15" subs on the left.

You need a long center channel? I have the best advice!



The paradigm monitor CC-390! It's a nice whopping 39 in long...should do great! And then you can come over to the 'digm side and get a full Monitor setup!



Edit...I just realized you need something over 4 feet long...wow. That is a giant center channel. I don't know of too many towers that are that tall...

The center I talked about, also has matching towers using the exact same drivers. The center channel baffle is 1" taller than the towers are wide, and the towers will be about 48-49" tall.

It's funny you should mention Paradigm, because I am going to try about build my enclosures very similar to the Studio series speakers. A baffle (with flush mounted drivers, not surface mounted) with a single curved wall. I'll say no more in case I don't get access to the CNC machine and thus have to build a boring square box.

What I've been doing recently is running the wires along the outside edge of the carpet. Push down with a spoon or thin blunt object and the wire slides between the crack...Go along the needed length like that and you'll have an invisible, easily removable wire.

Good call on keeping the wire above the tack strip that holds the carpet down. Those tacks are hella-sharp and can shred wire insulation!

Heath

Been doing it for a decade at least. Your carpets may be different...but there is nothing sharp touching the wire. This was with cat5 cable...so speaker wire will be even easier to conceal down there.