Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater How loud is your theater?

My extra crappy room with an axiom setup totality blows away the 1 major theater in Charlottetown, An Empire 8 so it's not a small complex.

My dialog is way clearer and I hardly ever hear surround sound effects at the theater. I hear so much more at home.

Now to be fair to Empire, I recently went to one of their Theater complexes in Halifax and I was hearing all sorts of wonderful surround effects. A very noticeable posative difference over my home town.

At home I normally run movies set to 75db if people want it really loud (Big action movie) and less (65) for normal movies. This is probably conservative for most of you but 75 is pretty loud in my little room. Also, at 75 I still get quick peaks to 100-103 in really wild scenes. (Slow & C) I'm thinking I get this wider range because of the relatively small room.

Andrew,

What kind of equipment do you have?

Thanks. And what is the volume of your room and how far away do you sit from your fronts?

I guess it's not totally small at apx. 14' x 13' x8' = 1456 cubic feet. It probably just feels smaller because it's square and basement. Probably places the couch at 10' or so from the fronts.

besides being almost square, it gets worse. It's finished but not much more to help with sound quality. Drywall over concrete for outside wall with a large window. Front and back walls are drywall to adjoining rooms with no insulation, 4th is a mix of stairway, outside wall and an adjoining room. Still no carpet, still no drapes. Not much to break up the sound except a couch, coffee table, bookshelf on a sidewall, 2 normally closed doors and an open stairway.

Oh, and my pride and joy... A color likeness of me, my wife and our pets done as Simpsons characters.

Someday I'll start work on the 'intended' HT room but for now these speakers still amaze me even in what should be a TOTALLY nightmare room from what I have learned here.

By the way, what are you thinking?

I'm always curious to hear what kind of gear and environment others have so that I can make a mental comparison with my own.

I personally find that surround effects and centre dialogue are highly dependent on the movie. Some movies, I don't have to touch my calibrated settings at all. And for others, I have to turn up the surrounds, the centre and sometimes even set the centre to large.

How about you? Do you have to tweak too?

Your comment about the last 5 or so years is very interesting. I'll have to see if that holds true as I watch movies.

By the way, my set-up is also calibrated to an almost zero reference level as I have all my speakers almost equidistant from my sweet spot. And I too have a very bright room but only 4,000 cu. ft. with a centre turned up to 2.5dB most of the time.

You don't have speakers listed under your name.