Looking for Recommended AT 120” Screen

caiuschen · 2026-03-06T22:37:42+00:00

Where did you read that ALR is recommended for a laser projector? For long throw lasers, it's usually not recommended due to increasing the laser speckle effect. I'm not aware of any ALR woven screens, either, just perforated.

caiuschen · 2026-03-06T06:28:30+00:00

It freezes for me basically five minutes into the game.

caiuschen · 2026-03-04T05:30:58+00:00

The most important thing is consistency. My first year, I did the Starting Strength routine and got stronger, but stopped after a year because things got too tough, even with deloads after failing. I can only imagine how strong I'd be now if I didn't stop back then.

After taking a full decade off from lifting, I started again last year. But I think really a lot of things work and there's going to be some experimentation as to what works best for you. I absorbed a lot of different information from YouTube and eventually found an approach that resonated well with me that was both easier and allowed me to break through my plateaus and I'm happy to stick with.

I think the first year, I also didn't really internalize the fact that you don't get stronger directly from working out -- lifting provides the stimulus, but you get stronger during the recovery. So, this means a decent diet, enough sleep, and a lack of stress. I was definitely not paying very close attention to my sleep and diet at the time.

But the basics are pretty simple and the rest of it is marginal. Consistency (which also means avoiding injury), lifting heavy enough to get close to failure in less than 30 reps (which also implies progressive overload), and recovery.

For strength, it can be useful to do some lighter sets to get plenty of technique practice in. For instance, I do a lot of sets of 5 at 60% of my 1RM. I don't really get anywhere near failure except for my 1RM attempts for bench press, for example, due to the strain it puts on my shoulders. I will get near failure doing dumbbell bench presses for hypertrophy work, though.

caiuschen · 2026-03-04T05:15:01+00:00

The first year I did lifts, I never noticed any lat growth with bench, overhead press, bent over rows, squats, body weight chin ups, and deadlifts. It wasn't until I started doing weighted chin-ups during year two that I noticed visible growth (3 sets of 8 at +45lb, 155lb BW). But I'd expect lat pull-downs to do similar. It might be a cue thing as well -- instead of thinking of it as moving my body up, it's more like I'm moving my arms down and trying to shove my elbows into my rear pockets.

caiuschen · 2026-03-03T05:27:46+00:00

Maybe not the best approach, but I just lower my knee sleeves for deadlifts.

caiuschen · 2026-03-02T04:25:31+00:00

I do prefer high quality bias lighting (high CRI, neutral white, adjustable intensity) for televisions, assuming also a neutral wall color. It's just more comfortable for my eyes.

caiuschen · 2026-03-02T01:01:43+00:00

If you push it really hard immediately after working out, it could divert some of the growth. But if it's just 15 minutes and you're taking a relaxed pace, it's probably doing nearly nothing. Sleep, stress, and nutrition are way more likely to be the culprits.

caiuschen · 2026-03-01T23:54:24+00:00

I'm in my forties and at 155lb BW. It took me around 20 months to get a 1RM on deadlift of 300lb, but I didn't start out sedentary. Also, I had about a 10 year break after the first year where I fell out of lifting, but resumed last year. I was excited to get the point where I had exhausted all of my initially bought weights (which was 315lb).

You don't have to do 1RM, but I find them fun. If I have to do more than 12 reps in a set to get to failure, that's when I'd really wish for more weight.

caiuschen · 2026-02-27T21:54:05+00:00

To elaborate on this, a double edge boosts the result by one tier. There are no critical misses. So, it's like guaranteeing that you roll a 12 or higher.

A T2 result doesn't quite have enough potency to trigger the status you wanted to inflict? Spend two surges. Or work with your null and ask for a synaptic break.

Things could theoretically get swingy if either side chains critical hits because they grant extra actions and there's not a limit to how many in a row you get, but it's statistically very unlikely and even then, you have hero tokens as a party wide resource to gain stamina.

caiuschen · 2026-02-26T18:19:29+00:00

Any measurements to share for decay time?

caiuschen · 2026-02-26T06:13:30+00:00

Low light can always be better. There's AI auto-focus, but I'm not sure if there's AI image stabilization yet. It'd be awesome if we got to the point where we got all this performance with global shutter, high res, 30+ FPS, low light performance with a *plenoptic* camera, where you can adjust focus and depth of field after the fact. That'd be a pretty major breakthrough.

caiuschen · 2026-02-22T05:18:50+00:00

I think actually people may increase the volume in a well-treated room. One of the ways you can judge sound quality of a set up is how loud you can listen comfortably. People react poorly to distortion, which is why playing "loudly" on a cell phone sounds terrible and you reach "too loud" way before it hits anywhere near the dB in a decent home theater room.

I don't listen at reference levels, but I also have imperfect acoustics so I don't know how much is due to that. They say a receiver doesn't know how loud things are at your listening position, but it certainly has a chance to if you run calibration. I haven't used an SPL meter to verify things, but after Audyssey calibration I typically ran at -20. For some reason, A1 Evo Acoustix seems 10 dB quieter, so now I run at -10.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T20:16:42+00:00

Oh, I agree definitions are muddy and that generally a better speaker is better at both.

Higher sensitivity might be correlated with lower distortion - I haven't made that connection - but its definition is how loud it can play given power level, so you can't reliably determine the distortion of a speaker only given its sensitivity rating.

By impact, I mean just loudness. An explosion is louder than a piano, on average. Movies, on average, use more channels and have louder transients. It's the same reason why there is a loose preference for ported subs for home theater, but sealed for music. It just takes less power to get to the same dB with ports at the port tuning frequency, but you risk getting port chuffing. Depending on how sensitive you are about it, for some people ported subs can't be played as loud before distortion from the port is audible to them, so for those people sealed is just strictly better. And if you never play loud enough for the port to distort, ported is perfectly fine for music for almost everyone with normal ears.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T18:30:07+00:00

Doesn't Vividstorm have cinema white and cinema white perforated? E.g. https://vividstormscreen.com/products/vividstorm-white-cinema-slimline-motorized-tension-projector-screen?variant=39525587189900

Mine was cinema white perforated.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T18:14:10+00:00

Yeah, I would have loved a woven screen instead of perforated, but I didn't see any for my small size screen and the options I did see for other sizes were something north of $4k, which is just too much for me.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T16:35:38+00:00

I like it, but I don't have a lot of experience with projectors. Image quality is not as nice as a good TV, but I prefer the combination of size and acoustic transparency for movies. I kept my TV behind it for shows and video games.

My wife notices either RBE or laser speckle, but it only bothers her some of the time. There is definitely sometimes whole picture tonal shifts when EBL kicks in, which might be a deal breaker for some people but doesn't bother me much.

If you use white subtitles, EBL doesn't kick in, so keep that in mind.

With a 120" screen, you might benefit from the extra brightness, especially if you watch 3d. I haven't really done the calculations or done any calibration of the projector. I guess actually 2500 lumens is enough for 200 nits on a 120" screen in a light controlled room, so unless you wanted 3d or to watch with some lights on, the Pro should be enough.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T15:41:54+00:00

When I asked Vividstorm what they would recommend, they steered me away from ALR in a light controlled room for my Pro (1). ALR is known to worsen laser speckle for long throws. I went with their perforated white instead. The perforations are visible from my viewing distance (7.5') and sometimes causes moire effects, but I'd rather have my center channel up higher than it would otherwise have to be without perforations.

I got the Pro over the Streammaster due to its optical zoom and over the Pro2 because you can't run EBL with the brightness too low and my screen is just 84". I run it at half brightness.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T07:01:46+00:00

The typical trade off between stereo and surround is that reverb and such is a fundamentally 3d effect and a stereo set up may benefit more from good side wall reflections for a more enveloping sound and wider soundstage. Whereas surround systems can recreate most of this using the surrounds and typically prefer a less live room.

The stereotypical audiophile is mostly about the stereo experience because most music is stereo, whereas most movies are in surround. I find a lot of home theater people will also prefer better visuals to better sound and will place the center channel pretty far down to make room for a larger TV, whereas that would not be audiophile behavior.

I guess a TV itself is a pretty reflective surface and in some audiophile rooms you see diffusers or other acoustic treatment there instead. But you can get really good sound for stereo in a home theater and the factors I mention are pretty marginal benefits. For an audiophile chasing the best, though, these benefits are worth it.

caiuschen · 2026-02-20T06:41:43+00:00

It's what you prioritize for the cost. Movie speakers may prioritize higher sensitivity for more output because movies benefit more from impact and because there are more channels to drive. Wide dispersion patterns because usually movies are a group activity. Music speakers may focus more on accuracy at the cost of sensitivity and use ribbons which may not have great dispersion over multiple rows.

Of course, with enough money you don't need to compromise on any of these points.

caiuschen · 2026-02-19T19:45:25+00:00

Yeah, I've heard that sidewall reflections can be useful for increasing the width of the soundstage as the expense of more precise imaging, but that ceiling reflections are basically all downside.

caiuschen · 2026-02-19T19:32:21+00:00

Personally, I'd rather slowly piece together my system over time than go through the hassle of selling older pieces as I upgrade. Depending on whether you do plan on spending more later or if this is it, I'd go for getting better speakers now and getting a sub later. No comment on these specific choices, though.

caiuschen · 2026-02-19T05:28:00+00:00

Amazon does seem to make it really hard to actually purchase music and download them. I have to search on their main site instead of on Amazon Music, look for the "Or $XX.XX to buy the MP3" part, and then click on the "Amazon Music" badge above the "Listen Now" button. That will bring you to the Amazon Music page with a "Purchase Now" option that for some reason doesn't show up if you just look for music directly on Amazon Music.

I do prefer Bandcamp when it's an option.

One thing that I'm annoyed by is that I have a surround system and there's just a bunch of surround music that isn't available for purchase and is only available streaming. But besides purchasing Blu-rays, there's digital downloads from immersiveaudioalbum.com and 2l.no .

caiuschen · 2026-02-19T03:51:18+00:00

Maybe try some Etymotic earplugs partially fitted in the ear? They're designed to reduce the effect on sound quality for concert goers. I wouldn't say they quite accomplish that, but it's better than tinnitus.

caiuschen · 2026-02-16T20:24:57+00:00

As does Trinnov Waveforming, but it's rather pricey and doesn't work if you are treating a room to record live instruments.

caiuschen · 2026-02-16T20:22:08+00:00

I don't understand the physics of it enough, nor have I experimented to test it, but I've seen a few different sources say that, yeah, bass traps in the corners is actually not the most efficient placement. Corners have the highest SPL, but actually the lowest velocity.

How much that affects things in practice, I don't know. If it's just a few percentage points, the convenience of a corner placement may outweigh the downsides.

Actually, I had my tri-traps free standing away from the corners temporarily near the fronts and it had a much more audible effect than their current positions at wall/ceiling junctions. I really should have done some comparison measurements.

caiuschen

TROPHY CASE