The process.......it has begun.........



....at least in my mind!

This will be a basement HT project, approximately 12' wide, 8' high, and 24' long(much leeway on length). I have attached a caveman-crude drawing of the space. I plan to treat acoustically as best I can, with the help of those "in the know". That's why I would like to get some help here before I do any buidling at all. Here are the issues:

1) It's thin, way thin. You will see that at one point, the large concrete porch foundation juts into the room about 2', and it's 8' long. A stairway and steel beam on one side, and the outside concrete basement wall on the other limit the width.

2) One end of the room will have the window well/escape window and main electrical panel.

3)I would like to use the AV123 LS6 line array speakers, which are large--that thin room again limits how much room I have on each side of my screen.

So, the window well end would make a better screen position, with the least obstructed view/listening position. However, I don't know if it could be done while keeping access. I could elongate it the other direction, even 6' or more, if that would help. That would be to your left while you view my pencil drawing.

This is a blank slate, so I would appreciate all inputs before I head down the wrong path.

Thanks to all!

I suggest you use a good Acoustically transparent screen and put your speakers behind it, sounds fabulous. I would deffinately put the screen at the narrow end and leave the bit wider area for your seating and passage. How many are you looking to seat anyway and are you thinking Theater seating or home theater recliners?

Will those big tall line arrays like being behind the screen+frame+cloth etc.? They have drivers that almost reach the ground, and would span several different materials. I thought of that, but was concerned about sound quality with all the different materials that the sound would pass through simultaneously. I was hoping to use recliners, and have from 4-6 seats, preferably 6.

Not sure how attached you are to those speakers, but have you thought of speakers that may be a bit more theater friendly. Afterall you will be sitting in the dark focussed on a movie, not looking at the pretty speakers.

As you work on designing the space, I would first focus on the room and then worry about what equipment you need to pull it all together. It's been said a zillion time here before - a well designed theater can make average speakers sound amazing - a poorly designed room can make ultra high end speakers sound like crap.

For the cost of those speakers you can hire a top notch theater designer to kept you overcome the room limitations. Might be something to think about.

The speakers would work IF you use the right materials also fitting two rows of three recliners in 12 feet and having enough room to get by them will be tight.

I agree with Michael above that a well designed theater can make average speakers sound amazing - a poorly designed room can make ultra high end speakers sound like crap.

http://www.theaterseatstore.com/1/a/1/45004_ht_tear.pdf It looks like the triple seat Berklines are 91.5"-97" wide(straight vs. curved). If the first row ends up in that 10.5' wide area, it looks like 2 seats only. A front row with 2, and a second row with 3 would be fine. I went down and remeasured, and re-examined. I could go a lot further in the one length direction. It would definitely give me more breathing room. I attached a new pic--I cut out the Berklines from that link above and pasted them in--they are very close to the correct scale. This arrangement would give me much better width in front and easier placement of whatever speakers I end up with. How does this one look?

That looks good so far. Long way to go and lots of things to consider and plan for but a good start.

Look at tweaking the lenght of the room. Your dimensions are going to be problematic as is:

width is half of length
length is 3x height
2x width = 3x height

No room to change height or width so tweaking the length is pretty much mandatory. You don't need to lose a lot of space but you'll definitely want to shorten it a bit.

Bryan

I changed that in the second design to 12.5' x 28' x 8'