Ok, fellas I am a rookie but love home theaters. We have decided to to refinish our basement and dedicate 1 room to a home theater. My room dimensions are 12x17. I have a concrete floor and the front wall and right wall are poured concrete. The left side is the staircase coming down with standard new home studding. Now the back I plan to make a half wall so people can view from bar as i am having a bar run the back of room. I wanted to be able to close this half wall for dedicated movie viewing when needed. All walls are currently scheduled for standard studding insulation and sheetrock

Above theater is living room which is rarely used.


Please give any advise on the simplest and cheapest way to reduce sound and any solutions to the half wall which would be 3'x12'.

Thanks

Some photos or sketches would be helpful. I can't visualize the 1/2 wall thing.

The standard technique for sound isolation is to decouple the walls and ceil and cover everything with a drywall-GreenGlue-drywall sandwich.

Ok sorry, like i said I am new I am trying to post some pics of the area. In the pic you will see a back door, that is going to be a double glass french door.

The idea of the half wall is so that during football games people can be at bar or playing shuffle board and watch the projection

I have tried to insert a pic of whole basement design but it will not upload, I think because it is on smart draw. If anyone would like me to email it to them I could. Thanks

If I understand correctly, you are trying to design a multi-use space. While granted, that does create some design compromises, there have been a number of people that have built some great theaters.

Take a look at Jeff Baker's build for example - http://public.fotki.com/jeffbaker24/bar__home_theater/.

I think I would do away with the idea of being able to isolate the theater only part of the time. Either have it as a seperate room, or integrate is wholely into a multi-use room.

Eitherway, keep exploring this site for design ideas. There is just soooo much to learn and sooo many things to screw up.

yes, I guess you could say I am trying to make the room more flexible and that is why I am putting the half wall/bar at back. This would almost look like a large window about 3' by 12' and I really would like to find a system to block that area when viewing movies that does not involve curtains. I am thinking sound proof panels.

Also, could anyone tell me about the concrete and how it affects sound?

To be sound proof, you would need to complete (airtight) seal the half wall. There isn't a way to do that isn't permanent. Some people use double doors when they want a larger pass-thru. But the difficulty then is that double doors are very difficult to seal and treat and therefore make create some audio issues. It all depends though on what YOU want out of the project. With every design there are trade-offs.

As for concrete, my best suggestion is for you to spend some and read the master sound treatment tread that is on top of the forum. There is just a ton to know when it comes to audio design/engineering/building/construction. It's the best place to start, but it will take you several hours to read and digest. The short answer is that depending on how you build your walls, it may not matter what is behind them (concrete or otherwise).