Watch as I turn 24 square feet of floor space into an amazing home cinema using only some cheap stuff I already had lying around the house.

Support what I do on Patreon (much appreciated!):
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=383206...

Subscribe for more theatre, home cinema and hi-fi updates.
   / @lamontmcleod2  

Ok so this closet space that my home theater will go in is about 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres or 5 x 5 feet– and some people might say, well that’s ridiculous, it’s not big enough for a theatre, you might as well wear headphone but you see, as everything gets smaller including the distance you are from it, the difference that the direction and source of the sound makes actually increases , so the difference between how this sounds and how this sounds is very different to me but not very different to someone who is even two metres away.
So when you’re sitting about less than 1.5 metres from your loudspeakers – there are two advantages to that, one is that you can listen at much lower volumes and still have proper surround sound, and the other is the spatial surround effect is increased. And a third one, that’s sort of like the first one, is that equipment that would be strained in a decent sized room, can still sound good and look good when we’re talking about the TV.
So the first thing I needed to do was to clear the space.
Now I had all the gear, receivers and speakers etc already, so it was tempting to start putting stuff in straight away, but in such a near field environment with hard walls, well... that’s a problem... so I wanted to get something soft on these walls to help it sound better and something DARK to help with... being dark. Now as you can see, I’m not too worried about the condition of this room – the walls in this house have always been in horrible condition – and one day it will all be renovated with new sheet rock – and building this that’s good news because I can screw into them, both for the curtains and if necessary, the speakers, so let’s do it.
This black polar fleece stuff is good enough – I already had it from 2 years ago when I made a short film and it absorps a lot of light - I know people are gonna say, it’s not sound absorption and it’s not hyperwave resonance tesaract certified and everything – it doesn’t matter. I’m not creating the ultimate home theater just for one person or two people – I’m making something quick, easy, cheap and that will be an enjoyable place to watch things and gives this otherwise useless space a home. So I’m using some fabric that I already had, and if you don’t, just get cheap dark fabric, should be $2 a metre, and it makes a very big difference – the most surprising part of which I’ll come back to later.
Now another really cool part of this for me, is getting to use some of the otherwise no good gear that I have because I have lots of speakers and AV receivers – a lot of nice ones too, and a few nice compact ones... but before I get to that, I’ll just explain this hi-tech TV stand here.
Now this table really was perfect... once I solved one little problem. As you can see, in it’s correct form, the TV’s feet sit just wide of the table. Obviously it’d be great if the TV was on of the proper base stands that runs the whole way along the bottom, but this is a cheap TV that I bought on clearance like 6 years ago when everything was going smart, and although it’s a 55” 4K TV, it was crazy cheap because it has no ”smarts” so to speak. I could probably sell this TV today for almost what I bought it for, if I just threw in a Chromecast.
The receiver I ended up going with is just a tiny bit of overkill for this space: the Yamaha RX-V3073 is their flagship home theater receiver from that year and I mean flagship... often when people say flagship, they mean it’s high end. But the 3073 was the best integrated receiver possibly on the market back then... and it shows, I’ll get to the sound in a minute but immediately I noticed usability was so much better than the Pioneer... changing things like which speakers and what level and everything is easy but also very clear, you’re never in doubt about what you’re doing so I really like this receiver.
I didn’t have the option for bigger speakers. I own dozens but any bigger than this doesn’t fit, unless they go above the TV which would affect the soundstage. And, if the speakers were any bigger, standing them would also become a problem, because the stands would be bigger and that pushes everything further away from the wall. So unless I get a smaller TV... these are really the biggest speakers that are feasible.
For the center speaker, I didn’t use the one from this set because I don’t love the design of that one. I don’t have any other speakers in this series, it’s the smallest of the Wharfedale Diamond 9 speakers.

Wow... the end of the description...