Good writeup doing the rounds and it is the constraints that make it worth reading, not the gear list. TCL 85QM851G, Denon X1700H, KEF Q350 across the front with the rear ports plugged, Polk XT15 for surrounds, two RSL Speedwoofer 10e subs, and a miniDSP 2x4 HD in the chain.
The rental part is the actual story. The house came with pre-outs already run for a 5.0, positioned on the assumption that the TV would live next to the front door. He did not get to choose where the speakers go - somebody else did that years ago. Then the couch was a gift, is not modular, and cannot be flipped to face the better wall. That is most people's real home cinema situation and it almost never shows up in the build threads that get upvoted.
Plugging the rear ports on the Q350s is the detail I would underline for anyone skimming. Sealing a ported bookshelf when it has to sit close to a wall is about the cheapest fix in this hobby and hardly anybody does it. Costs nothing and kills the one-note bloom you get from a rear port firing into plasterboard from four inches away.
The honest bit is the miniDSP. He says he could not get the subs sounding right with it and is repurposing it for bass shakers instead, with the LFE cable already run to the couch. Level matching two subs is the easy half; getting them to agree in the time domain is where it usually falls apart, and that is normally a measurement problem rather than a gear problem.
If you have got two subs and a miniDSP sitting there half-used, what finally made it click - REW and a calibrated mic, or did you just move them until it stopped sounding wrong?
The rental part is the actual story. The house came with pre-outs already run for a 5.0, positioned on the assumption that the TV would live next to the front door. He did not get to choose where the speakers go - somebody else did that years ago. Then the couch was a gift, is not modular, and cannot be flipped to face the better wall. That is most people's real home cinema situation and it almost never shows up in the build threads that get upvoted.
Plugging the rear ports on the Q350s is the detail I would underline for anyone skimming. Sealing a ported bookshelf when it has to sit close to a wall is about the cheapest fix in this hobby and hardly anybody does it. Costs nothing and kills the one-note bloom you get from a rear port firing into plasterboard from four inches away.
The honest bit is the miniDSP. He says he could not get the subs sounding right with it and is repurposing it for bass shakers instead, with the LFE cable already run to the couch. Level matching two subs is the easy half; getting them to agree in the time domain is where it usually falls apart, and that is normally a measurement problem rather than a gear problem.
If you have got two subs and a miniDSP sitting there half-used, what finally made it click - REW and a calibrated mic, or did you just move them until it stopped sounding wrong?
