I have a local home theater company that said they will come to my home and do their mojo. From this they will tell me where the best places are for the speakers and lighting. Is this a good three Ben Franklin's spent or is doing this on my own not that difficult? Currently my room is bare studs.

Thanks

Terry

Terry-

You may want to start by placing a blue print of the room with dimensions(doesn't have to be overly fancy...even hand drawn and scanned is fine) as well possibly some pictures here first. There is enough collective knowledge on this forum that someone might be able to help. Additionally, there are often experts in the fields of acoustics, electrical, lighting, etc. that will often be willing to answer your questions.
This is where I would start. Good luck with your endeavors.

Allan

While I would spend money to have someone completely design my theater, I wouldn't waste the money to have someone just tell me where to put my speakers and how to install lights. This is easy to figure out.

As Allan says, post your ideas and plenty of people with years of design experience will weigh in.

Terry,

I paid Dennis Erskine to design my theater but I was starting with only two walls and wanted the room size and shape optimized for acoustics. Speaker placement is pretty straight forward. You can follow the guidelines on the Dolby website and you'll be just fine. As far as lighting, that's pretty easy to work out for yourself and with the advice of the AVS members.

My experience with most home theater companies (DE excluded) is that they're really more interested in selling you equipment. I had one guy out to give me a quote on a projector and the next thing I knew he'd given me a proposal for $24k worth of automation, racks, screen, programming, etc. (the projector was only $6k or the total). He wouldn't sell me the projector (which he'd quuoted at list price BTW) unless I bought all the rest because he couldn't 'guarantee' the image quality unless he did it all.

Good Luck,

Dave

Thanks everyone for the input. I think I'll go the route of posting the room layout here and get your feedback. Have to see if I can find the house plans. They are around here somewhere. They will probably be the last place I look. :rolleyes:

They will probably be the last place I look. :rolleyes:

If you keep looking for them after you find them, then I can say you should hire someone to do it all for you :p Maybe even sit with you to explain the movies :D

OK here is the layout of my theater room.

http://webpages.charter.net/tlwarnke/Theater%20room.jpg

The screen wall will be the wall on the left. I was thinking of putting the equipment under the stairs but the WAF was not there. So the equipment will go on the lower right hand corner. It will be sitting on a 12 foot by 6 foot riser. The room is surrounded by soffits. Because of HVAC stuff being in the soffit by the stairs it will be difficult to put can lighting in there. I will post pictures of the room later today.

Terry,

I paid Dennis Erskine to design my theater but I was starting with only two walls and wanted the room size and shape optimized for acoustics. Speaker placement is pretty straight forward. You can follow the guidelines on the Dolby website and you'll be just fine. As far as lighting, that's pretty easy to work out for yourself and with the advice of the AVS members.

My experience with most home theater companies (DE excluded) is that they're really more interested in selling you equipment. I had one guy out to give me a quote on a projector and the next thing I knew he'd given me a proposal for $24k worth of automation, racks, screen, programming, etc. (the projector was only $6k or the total). He wouldn't sell me the projector (which he'd quuoted at list price BTW) unless I bought all the rest because he couldn't 'guarantee' the image quality unless he did it all.

Good Luck,

Dave

Same experience. I had multiple "Home Theater" designers/builders (before DE) come out and virtually all just soaked up my whole budget in proposed equipment. One company told me it would be best to get all the equipment up and running, then if there are any acoustic issues, they can be addressed with some strategically placed panels. Another guy yelled "HEY!" in my empty bonus room, and said "You hear that echo?, that means you're getting good sound reflection in the room as is." :rolleyes:

So what are the exact components a consumer should expect in terms of designing a home theater?