If the $6 million home theater's too steep, how about a 1 percent solution?

(Credit: Robert Wright)

Jeremy Kipnis' $6 million home theater caused quite a stir back in February; so much so that he's now proposing guidelines for others to build a dream home theater for a mere 1 percent of his original price. Kipnis didn't recommend much in the way of specific brands or models of equipment, just the design goals for a $60,000 ultimate home theater.

Here's a brief rundown of what you would need to get close to the performance of Kipnis Studio Standard:

All of the speakers must be identical.

The six or seven-channel layout must be completely circular, and all of the speakers but be precisely placed, relative to the center point of the circle.

Seating must be arranged to be near the center of the theater, and acoustically vetted for the room.

The room must be free of parallel surfaces and acoustically treated.

The speakers should be bi or tri amplified--with a dedicated amplifier channel for each tweeter, midrange, and woofer.

The use of multiple subwoofers, ideally one per channel, would be required to produce the smoothest possible deep bass response.

As far as video is concerned Kipnis's remarks were limited to the next two sections:

Projected on-screen light levels must be or exceed 48.5 foot-Lamberts, and not deviate on screen by more than +/- 5% across the entire surface. 2K resolution is a bare minimum.

Color space, primaries, and gamma must be able to conform to Rec. 601 (NTSC), Rec. 709. (HDTV), and DCI Theater Standards, and must be thoroughly calibrated for each source media (Blu ray, DVD, cable, etc).

I did manage to get Kipnis to supply one specific recommendation, he likes JVC's DLA-RS2 projector, which would eat up $8K of the $60K budget.

Is it possible to execute all of the above for $60K? Sounds like a real stretch to me, what do you think?

I'd like to hear from any of you who attempted to build an ultimate home theater and what was required to get the job done.

[waldolc]

I have built nothing as grandiose as the KSS, but I have come very close and spent only $52,000 which included all wiring, carpentry, labor; etc. Of course, the space was nowhere near the size of Kipnis' room.

[hfjacinto]

While a $60,000 system is really nice, the design restrictions would kill most people from buying it. The perfect seating position would be almost impossible for most homes. If you have a preexisiting room to place all the speakers in a circular pattern would be overkill and might require massive remodeling, therefore changing the $60K package into $100K.

What should be tried is to get the best acoustics possible in a standard or current room, speakers should have the ability to be placed with movable tweeters, woofers (something like Elan's speaker system) so that sweet spot can be achieved without destruction of a new room.

And $60K for an audio/video system is such overkill. One can spend under $10K and have a system that is the envy of most audiophiles. The difference in my mind between a $10K system and a $60K system is a nice A6 parked in the garage or $50K in the bank.

The biggest issue with having high-end equipment is taking the time to get everything set-up correctly to get the best bang for the picture/sound. As was posted in your previous blog, most people don't waste time in doing this.

[waldolc]

On the one hand I do agree with you. On the other, this is what I do for a living...

[hfjacinto]

Waldolc,

I have a friend who has very nice ($$$$) equioment, every time I go to his house to hang out, his room acoustics are so bad that no matter what he buys you either get an echo or you hear rumblings from the walls (reverb from the sub). I have the opposite problem, in my case the TV room has ceramic tile floor, 2X4 walls (in front of a concrete wall -basement) and a shape that looks like like a broad T that creating a perfect sweet spot is almost impossible. I also am limited into what I can do because of structural supports. That is why something with movable tweeters, woofers would be good for me. For people like us (which is probably 90 to 95% of the population) having super expensive equipment doesn't justify.

This doesn't mean that one should go out and buy a Home Theather in a Box (HTB) becuase what you usually get is crap. People and stores with return policies really help. My first set of speakers sounded great in the store but sucked with the room acoustics. I actaully went through 3 different speaker systems before I found one that sounded decent.

Now if I had the money and space to do it right, I would hire someone like you because I feel you could probably set-up a room correctly, but I would still spend the bulk of the money on the room itself (such as sound absorbing material, electrical hookups, seating, etc.) my budget for AV equipment and speakers would be $10K and under with the bulk of it for the speakers. IMO whatever electronic equipment you buy today is obsolete the second you buy it so $5000 for an AV receiver is not worth it or $15K for a blu-ray player.

Use the bulk of the of 60K for the room, $5000 for speakers, buy a nice receiver for $1K and use the rest for the TV and audio/video equipment becuase no matter how expensive your stuff is if the room acuastics suck, your sound is also going to suck.

[The Kipnis Studios]

Greetings!

Kipnis Studios will be concluding formal public demonstrations of The Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS) - Ciné Beta Screening Room on Saturday, September 6th, 2008.

Anyone interested in a complete, hand-tailored tour should feel free to contact me through our website:

http://www.Kipnis-Studios.com

Cheers and Thanks for Looking -

Jeremy

Kipnis Studios

[The Kipnis Studios]

Greetings!

Kipnis Studios will be concluding formal public demonstrations of The Kipnis Studio Standard (KSS) - Ciné Beta Screening Room on Saturday, September 6th, 2008.

Anyone interested in a complete, hand-tailored tour should feel free to contact me through our website!

Cheers and Thanks for Looking -

Jeremy

Kipnis Studios

[kohnstamc]

Hi< I was able to set up quite a nice system for 12,500 for the equipment and seats, and another 10 k for a complete buildout of the theatre room . My room is rectangular ( more like a conventional theatre) , seats 8 and has a riser to appropriate head hieght allowing for a 12 ft screen ( full 2:35:1 , cinewide. 9.1 sourround THX certified). the key was getting better prices on the internet and having the items shipped directly to the house. I have figured that by ordering and running my own wire ( use Mono price or better cables- not monster) , paying for the contrctuction and then ordering and hooking up my own sources components ( I have 5 HD sources , all 1080P, ranging from a vudu player to an HTPC) I figured I put in the complete theatre for 1/3 what a formal installer would have charged by apllying the labor to the complicated things, ( screen selection, calibrations , wiring , setup etc.) If you are handy enough todo that you will save a ton of money and enjoy the process of putting in the theatre