Thorfun

I always thought Das Boot was a great film for sound from the silence inside the sub to the crashing waves above it. damn good film to boot as well. (pun intended) and the House of flying daggers drum scene to test out your 7 speaker surround system

I'm going to be lazy and post this link https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/search/?&q=lighting designer&author=Thorfun&search_and_or=and which is a search of my posts for "lighting designer" 😉 results include a post where I give the Instagram account of the designer we used.

enjoy!!

If your BCO is walking around with a tape measure checking every minutiae then you’ve got the only one!

@BotusBuildi've been a long journey to get internet to our new build. long story short, i advise going to BT or EE as they will pay more towards the excess charges from Openreach. our excess charges were £1300 for a new pole and cable, Vodafone said they wouldn't cover the charges and didn't want to pass them to me (not that i would've paid them) and told me to look elsewhere. Plusnet (despite being part of BT) said they wouldn't cover the charges and i had to pay all of them....including VAT. so i told them where to go. then i tried EE (as BT has already ****** up at the start of our journey and i had a beef with them) who said they'd cover the excess charges up to £6k. so, ditch Plusnet and go for EE even if it's a little more expensive as they might cover all of your excess charges. good luck! we're on our 4th service provider and have been without a line since BT screwed up at the end of Nov 2024. our 4G service is just about good enough for TV but not if the kids are also streaming at the same.

Just read through AVforum for a few days and you’ll be an arm chair expert and quoting impedance value of different speaker wires like a pro.

It doesn’t have to be. You can get all-in-one kits to give a pretty good surround experience.

Could you have plugged something new into the ring main that’s causing noise?

Many years ago when I was buying a home cinema setup I compared Denon with Onkyo as the specs were similar but I found the Onkyo quite treble-y and the Denon was much warmer. obviously it depends on the speakers you’re pairing it with which is why it’s important to go listen to different combos. Although that’s not perfect as it’ll sound different in different rooms too! but eventually you’ll just get used to it anyway so it probably doesn’t matter.

i meant any home! it's like reading the threads on avforums where they say one thing is better than another but most "normal" people in their "normal" environments really won't tell the difference! i'd put the £350 towards a better amp or speakers

probably won't notice a difference in your home though, right?

most amps come with a mic and a self-setup so i wouldn't bother with extra stuff

Yeah, true. But some still make in the UK. I think BK subs are UK made which are good.

Why so many pocket doors? They’re expensive and you can’t fix to the wall where the pocket is as the door needs to go into it! we had pocket doors planned for all our en-suites but had to use normal doors for two of them as the towel rails needed to be hung on the wall where the pockets would’ve been. Our architect didn’t pick up on that and it was a change we had to make quite a way in to the build! also, they’re quite loud when opening and closing.

looking at the photo looks like I used some plasterboard screw as well. Can’t remember if they were in to the res bars or not though. Sorry. i’m sure pink grip would be strong enough though. Our plasterers used it for all the edge beadings. @nod will be able to give you a definitive answer though.

We glued with pink grip

Plenty of quality Uk audio manufacturers still around

Sure. Hadn’t considered that option! 🤦‍♂️

intercom, camera, NFC, iPad all on my todo list! I have the components just haven't fitted them yet. I'm sure I'll get to it one day.

I was thinking more of the surround speaker placements rather than Atmos as unless you've side walls you'll need to suspend them from the ceiling as those aren't supposed to be at ceiling height. e.g.

Yep! Exactly this.

The Whitewing stuff is basically DMX controlled relays/dimmers. I have mains and 24V units but also some Loxone relays although Mike from Whitewing is now offering mains relays and I’d probably use those if I was doing it again as they work out substantially cheaper iirc. so I have a mix of mains lighting and 24V leds/strips but it’s all wired back and controlled centrally from the Loxone cabinet. You have to consider the voltage drop for 24V lighting when doing it this way and size the cable accordingly. when you start to get a hang of this all go through my thread again as there is some great information on there but I understand it’s a lot to go through and digest when you’re first starting out!

Damn! That’s a lot of questions. Although pales in to comparison to the number of questions I asked on the subject. 🤣 1. Loxone all the way for me. I wanted a system that was easy to manage/maintain if I wasn’t around. 2. I think so. At least I hope so! I think as long as you don’t use tree cable then you could change ecosystem. I ran 1.5mm T&E to every fitting and Cat6A to every switch and PIR location. You can run multiple tree devices off a single cable but I configured each room so I had one Cat6A cable for 2 x tree devices generally. More cable but gave flexibility if I didn’t want to use tree devices. 3. I asked the same question and was told it was a waste of time and cable. 4. in Loxone if you went for their 24V downlights then each on is individually addressable and controllable if you want. I’ve done that in our music room and set each one to be a different colour for one setting which was pretty cool. but you can just do the same as for home assistant and control 230V fittings wired in a string using either Loxone relays or 3rd party controllers. I like the Whitewing stuff but others have bought cheaper controllers from Aliexpress. But I chose to support a small UK company in the end. Also Loxone gives you the option to run different controllers, e.g DMX, KNX, Dali etc. so it can basically do whatever you want! It’s definitely a bit on a minefield when you start thinking about it all and it took me a while to get my head around it all. Take your time and all will become clear in the end.

We had to (SE England) have a step down due to building regs. isn’t it something to do with fuel spillage? I never bothered to read up on it and just did as we were told.

I think you’re going to the wrong cinemas! 🤣