New home theater project XMC-1, XPA-7, DIY speakers and subs

[trevordj]

Hello all,

I have been in and out of the forum for the last several years, mostly I lurk. Occasionally I post. I am getting ready to set up my living room with some speakers I have been designing for several years. I figured what better for the component side of the new project than the XMC-1 and the XPA-7, which I just purchased today. This was a little earlier than I was looking to purchase, but I had to get in before the price of the XMC-1 went up.

My current system consists (or, rather, consisted) of a UMC-200, a UPA-700, a UPA-2, and a whole bunch of Orb Audio speakers (along with their 10 inch subwoofer, the Uber 10). The Orbs were nice, and my wife loved the way they looked, but I didn't like that they required a ton of equalization to sound decent. Don't get me wrong, they were nice and served their purpose well, but it is was time for an upgrade! Plus, I have always been a DIY kinda person and I currently do not have a project to keep me busy. I sold my Orb speakers and subwoofer and will be slowly building the new speakers and subs over the next few months. In addition, the UMC-200 and UPA-7 will be moved to an upstairs bedroom where I will be doing an additional smaller scale project (already underway).

I will keep a rolling log of the project as I complete it. I will add some pictures of the gear I have already acquired and the project spaces just because pictures make things more interesting.

Gear:

Living Room:

Panasonic 60" VT60 Plasma
Tivo Roamio
Intel NUC running Kodi and Emby
Oppo BDP-103D
Harmony Ultimate Home remote
Philips Hue lighting
XMC-1
XPA-7 for powering L/C/R
Speakerpower SP2-8000 to power HST18s
Speakerpower SP2-8000 to power HST15s
DIY 2-way left and right speakers utilizing Acoustic Elegance TD12M Midbass and Beyma TPL-150H Tweeters
DIY 2-way center channel utilizing 2 x Acoustic Elegance TD8M Midbass and Beyma TPL-150H Tweeter
DIY end table subwoofers utlizing 2 x Stereo Integrity HST18 subwoofers (eventually will be 4)
DIY wall mounted subwoofer cabinets x 2, each with dual Stereo Integrity HST15s

Spare Bedroom:

Panasonic TH-42PZ800U 42" plasma
Tivo Mini
Intel NUC running Kodi and Emby
Harmony Ultimate Home remote
Philips Hue lighting
UMC-200
UPA-7 for powering DIY soundbar
Speakerpower SP1-4000 to power the HST11
DIY L/C/R Soundbar utilizing 3 x Tymphany NE123W 4" midrange and 3 x Tymphany XT25 tweeters
DIY subwoofer utilizing a Stereo Integrity HST11 subwoofer

I have purchased or already own everything above. The Acoustic Elegance woofers were ordered in early March and have yet to be built (usual build time is a few months). I still need to build all the enclosures. I will likely begin by building the HST-11 and sound bar enclosures just to get my feet wet again.

Any feedback or input any of you may have would be greatly appreciated! I'm looking forward to having a project to share

[creimes]

Hey Trevor, awesome to hear of another DIY'er, I recently did a Mach 5 IXL-18 sub build and I love it, would do another but that is not in the cards at the moment haha, can't wait to see the progress, adding this thread as a bookmark

Chad

[teaman]

Congrats on your new equipment Trevor. DIY projects are always fun. I repurposed a pair of Klipsch KG-4's into what you see in my avitar. Running fronts and center with these speakers sounds amazing and takes up less footprint than the original speakers did.

Good luck with your new theater room!

[Deleted]

High five on those hst subs.... I was watching Nick's build of the do hst 11 on avs... that looks like one mean little sub. I wouldn't mind doing an ottoman with a couple of the hst12's. Lol. Keep us posted on your progress.

Ivor.

[trevordj]

Thanks guys!

Chad I was very much on the fence between the HSTs and the Mach 5 UXL18s. Mach 5 makes some very impressive drivers from what I can tell. The tie breaker for me was that I have experience with SI drivers in the past; I had a pair of BM Mk IIIs in my car and they were impressive to say the least. I am sure I will try some of Mach 5's drivers at some point though, they are sweet!

Thanks teaman! Those speakers look nice.

Ivor, thanks for the propers regarding the HST speakers. I had the HST18s on order when I saw that build thread Nick put up with the HST11s that you are referring to. I was so impressed I ordered one and then my whole idea snowballed for building out my spare bedroom .

Here are some pictures. I will work on getting some information up regarding enclosure design and plans for the sound bar soon.

My current space:

I mounted the VT60 plasma on the wall above the fireplace. This is obviously a less than optimal position but the room is really setup in such a way that this is the only option. I ran smurf tube from the cabinet on the right up to the TV and across to the cabinet on the left. I will be designing the speakers to fit in the open shelves on either side of the TV. they will be actively crossed over using a minidsp and will have front firing ports so I will be able to work with them being built into the cabinets. The mantle will hold the center channel which limits the total depth to only 7.5". I gave myself 9.5" of total height under the TV to work with. I really wish I could have mounted my TV about 2-3 feet lower though.



The spare bedroom will have the TV wall mounted with all the gear tucked into the closet to the left. I already opened up the wall, ran all the cables, installed a few outlets, and patched everything up. Here is how it looks now:







I have owned this panasonic TZ800 42" plasma since 2008 and the TV is still awesome. I was able to purchase from the very last run of panasonic plasmas before they stopped manufacturing them. It is a shame plasma technology is dead. Luckily my VT60 should last for several years.

Here is my son next one of the SI HST18s that was delivered a few days ago. It is hard to demonstrate just how massive this 70lb beast is.



Just for kicks, here is my old equipment rack form my setup in Texas. My recent move to Oregon resulted in my upgraditis. All this gear has served me well, however.



Also, for fun, I enjoy making RCA and speaker cables. I am still a ways off from building any new cables for my new setup, but this is a taste of what I like to do.

RCAs



Speaker cables





For the XMC-1/XPA-7 I will obviously be utilizing XLR cables and I will try to incorporate speakon connectors into most if not all my DIY enlosures. New cable building will be in my future!

[siggie]

Looking forward to this thread--particularly the speaker building. I'm just dipping my toe in that water.

siggie

[siggie]

Apr 9, 2015 14:45:48 GMT -5 teaman said:

DIY projects are always fun. I repurposed a pair of Klipsch KG-4's into what you see in my avitar.

You turned a pair of Klipsches into a dog! Does Parts Express have a kit for that?

[vneal]

You do nice work(cables)

[teaman]

Apr 9, 2015 21:19:02 GMT -5 siggie said:

Apr 9, 2015 14:45:48 GMT -5 teaman said:

DIY projects are always fun. I repurposed a pair of Klipsch KG-4's into what you see in my avitar.

You turned a pair of Klipsches into a dog! Does Parts Express have a kit for that?

The "woofers" are fantastic!

[trevordj]

Quick update:

I am still waiting on the Acoustic Elegance TD12Ms and TD8Ms. Production delays are common with them so I am not surprised. This was compounded in this case due to the recent labor disputes/strikes at multiple US ports. Parts have now arrived but I haven't received any updates as to whether my woofers have started being build yet.

The biggest update is that I decided against using the Crown XLS-2000s for subwoofer duty. I have read several reports that the Crown amplifiers roll off at 12db/octave around 20hz. This is clearly not ideal, especially for the sealed HST11. Luckily, the amplifiers were still in Amazon's return window so I sent them back. After a lot of thinking, I decided I am going to go with Speakerpower rack mount amplifiers instead. They are substantially more expensive but are flat to less than 5hz and have substantially more long term power output. I am going with the SP1-4000 for the HST11 and the SP2-8000 for the HST-18s. The other nice thing about going with these amplifiers is that they are 2-ohm stable so in the future I could always double up my subwoofers (running two per channel) without having to upgrade my amplifiers.

It's too bad Emotiva doesn't make some high quality, high output, class D amplifiers. I read they are planning to release some class D amplifiers to replace the retired UPA line but they are stated to be in the DC-1 chassis and, I assume, not high power producers that would be capable of driving large subwoofers.

[134lrs]

Wow, nice work. As a fellow DIY guy, I really look forward to you build. Keep us updated.

[trevordj]

Just to update this, I haven't abandoned this project or anything. I am still waiting on my amplifiers and the acoustic elegance woofers. In the mean time I have been assembling a home server. I built a FreeNAS server in a supermicro 3ru case. The chassis has 16 hard drive bays but I started with 8 x server grade hgst 6tb hard drives. One of these drives is dedicated to whole house time machine and windows backups. The other 7 drives are in a RAIDZ2 configuration to yield 27TB of media storage. This is a substantial upgrade to my current Mac mini that is maxed out with 4 TB of storage. I also am ditching the Mac mini and am outfitting both media spots in my home with Intel inuc client PCs. These will run windows 7 and XBMC with content stored on the server. The little inucs are a very nice upgrade over the Mac mini as a client machine. They also have a much smaller footprint.

I have also installed some in cabinet racks and have rack mounted all the home theater gear. I'll post photos tomorrow.

[134lrs]

I have always wanted to do a build with AE speakers. The driver selections that you've made are top notch. Prior to reading this thread I'd never heard of the Beyma Tweeters. After much research, they are quite impressive. I look forward to more updates on this project.

[trevordj]

Jul 2, 2015 8:08:34 GMT -5 134lrs said:

I have always wanted to do a build with AE speakers. The driver selections that you've made are top notch. Prior to reading this thread I'd never heard of the Beyma Tweeters. After much research, they are quite impressive. I look forward to more updates on this project.

Thank you! I have been wanting to build these speakers for several years now but they were out of my price range at the time. No doubt, AE speakers are best of the best. I ordered all of them with the apollo upgrade as well but I have no doubt these will be speakers that will last a long time (I hope so anyway, they weren't cheap!). There are few tweeters that will pair well the the TD12M in a two way. It is pretty much these or horns with compression drivers. AE is also selling some tweeters now that are similar to the TPL-150s.

Since it has taken awhile to get the speakers I figured I would future proof my order. I tacked on an extra pair of TD8Ms and one addition TD12M. Here's why:

One day I will build a dedicated HT room with projection and an acoustically transparent screen. When that day comes, I will re-purpose the TD-8Ms in the center channel for surround duty. I will build a center channel that is identical to the left and right speakers (TD12M-8 and Beyma TPL-150H). At that time I will want to have enough TD8Ms to build 4 surrounds (for 7.1) probably with some TPL-150s as well (the version without the waveguide). Since it takes around 6 months to get speakers from AE I figured I would put everything I need on the same order.

Thats how I explained it to my wife anyway .

[trevordj]

Here are photos of the pull out racks I installed. Who says you can't rack mount the XPA-7? The amplifier rack has one lonely place for the speakerpower sp2-8000. The minidsp 10x10HD is all ready to go as is the XMC-1.

I am really glad I went with these pull out racks. It was pretty much impossible trying to wire up all these components in a closed rack.

I'll post pictures of the server and guest bedroom rack in the near future. I am still waiting on the AE woofers before I can start building the speakers.

Attachments:

[trevordj]

Those are some super crappy pictures (I just noticed) I will dig out the SLR and get some better ones up.

Oh, and the UPA-2 is coming out. I upgraded to a XPA-200 which should be here early next week. This will serve as second zone duty for now but will eventually be used for rear speakers. I don't think I mentioned that all 7 channels of the XPA-7 will be used for the front L/C/R. Left and right will be actively processed two way and the center will be actively processed 2.5 way (to limit lobing).

In the mean time, if anyone is interested in a UPA-2 or USP-1, let me know. They are out of warranty but in great shape with very little use. I'll post an ad in the emporium at some point.

[trevordj]

Just like that, after several months of waiting I received notification that the Acoustic Elegance TD12Ms and the Speaker Power amplifiers shipped out on the same day! They should be in my hands by the end of the week and I can finally move forward with the project. The TD8Ms are still a few weeks out.

[garbulky]

I hope those pull out racks can take the strain of the XPA-7!!
Also I assume you have put some active cooling in there huh? Very nice look imo.

[trevordj]

Jul 15, 2015 17:44:54 GMT -5 garbulky said:

I hope those pull out racks can take the strain of the XPA-7!!
Also I assume you have put some active cooling in there huh? Very nice look imo.

I haven't installed the fans yet but they are coming. I like the look too, it really cleans things up. It is really the only way my wife would go for this setup too .

Each of those pull out racks can hold 300 pounds. It didn't even flinch when I installed the XPA-7. I wish I could say the same for my arms, it was very difficult muscling that thing into the rack!

[trevordj]

I got the XPA-200 installed and took some better pictures: