Hi!
Been reading for a while, and very excited and inspired by what people here are building! I have a completely unfinished basement and we're going to start finishing it soon. I can choose any room for a dedicated home theater.

There are two obvious rooms (to me). I'm hoping some of y'all can help me figure out which is the better room, or maybe suggest something I haven't even thought of yet.

Here are links to PDF versions of the existing floor plan
- Simple Basement Floor Plan (http://highdpi.com/other-ht/Floorplan-Basement-simple.pdf)
- Basement Floor Plan with Dimensions and Ducts (http://highdpi.com/other-ht/Floorplan-Basement-dimensioned.pdf)

Sorry about the complexity of the dimensioned version. Its been a while since I worked with CAD! :) Also wanted to give detail since I've got some oddly placed beams, ducts, and utilities to work around.

The two choices I see are either the 12x26 room along the back wall or the 17x18 room in the back corner.

The 17x18 room would be ideal I think because it sits away from everything else and is already almost completely walled in. ... If it weren't for HVAC, hot water heater, and sump pump. I might be able to relocate the hot water heater outside the room, but I'd still have to frame around the two corners and that will eat up a lot of space in the room, leaving about 10' wide at best between the two boxed out corners to hang the screen. Another thought on this room is possibly just framing up about 2.5' above the sump, leaving the space above it open for use. It's possible a screen could be hung in that corner.

I'm hoping to go for a 2.35:1 screen about 9.5' wide and 4' tall. I haven't decided yet on perf vs solid screen but I really like the idea of putting front left,right, center, and sub out of sight and behind the screen.

Option 2, the 26x12 sized room. It's long and narrow. One concern I have is I'd like to put the seating, two rows, at about 11' and 16' ... what to do with the extra room at the back? Also, as is, this space is very open, but to get good acoustics (and also be able to crank up the movies at night while people sleep on the 2nd floor) I think I'd need to build some serious walls.

Any thoughts on which room would make the best HT?

Not sure what to tell you. How many seats do you want in your theater?

Somewhere between 3 and 7 seats ... know that's not very specific. Part of the problem I'm having is BECAUSE it is a blank slate, having a tough time getting started.

Depending on the room, I'd like either two rows with 2 or 3 up front and 2-4 back, or in a pinch if I can only get one row, I'd do 3 or 4 seats in an arc.

I might upload some more sketches later. I have 3 different scenarios for the more square room, but they are all kind of shoe horned in. In the longer narrow room, it's pretty easy to lay out the room, except it makes a labrinth with a lot of hallway to get to the back corner room if I completely enclose it.

Being that the ceiling is only 8' and there are 1 or 2 I-beams and one duct, going to have to build a bulkhead around those and that may affect second row riser seating.

I'm trying to to build this with great audio in mind: audio treatments and insulated walls (maybe double drywall too) to keep the sound in. So I'm trying to factor that in to in the early stages.

Here's a more specific question:
- Is it a problem for audio to have the seating and screen catty-corner to the parallel walls of the room?

If you go with the long and narrow room you could build a false wall to hide your speakers behind. Seating could be two row of three with perhaps bar rail for athrird row.

I am burning out excessive length with Front AND rear acoustically transparent spaces. 5.2 with a sub hidden up front and a matching one hidden in the rear.

If you go with the long and narrow room you could build a false wall to hide your speakers behind. Seating could be two row of three with perhaps bar rail for athrird row.

I like the bar rail idea. I will keep that in mind.

The false wall is a good option to consider too, I'll hopefully narrow it down by Friday as that's when I have a contractor coming to pull together a quote.

I think this is definately going to be a partly contracted/sub contracted job and part DIY.

Tedd, thanks for the PM, you have a reply.

- - -

I sat down with 1/2" = 1' drawings tonight and a scale. Elimated one idea, just wasn't going to fit. Then I came up with about 2 or 3 more scenarios. ;-)

So, hopefully will be posting 3-5 refined drawings here in the next day or two. Will really appreciate feedback on the pros and cons. I have some thoughts, but I'm sure there are things some of you'll notice that didn't dawn on me.

Is there a rule of thumb, for perf screen, when putting speakers and absorbtion material behind the screen, what's the minimum amount of space needed between the screen and the wall?

Without touching off a major debate... is either perf vs solid preferred if the build will allow a choice? I'm leaning toward perf to have the sound come through the screen and hide the speakers. But at least one scenario I'm considering has a false wall with the speakers flush mounted.

I still need to get the revised drawings up with a couple different scenarios. Should be soon. Good news is we can move the hot water heater very cheap and gain a couple more feet of usable space on the screen wall if I go with the back corner room.

In the mean time, what's the word on bass response on a concrete floor? My whole basement is poured concrete floor and walls. I will be framing out the walls, but was just going to put carpet and pad down over the floor. Do I need a framed floor or a cheap floating floor to carpet on top of to improve subwoofer transmission?

Okay, think my bass transmission fears were unfounded. I was half way through the Sandmans Home Theater Construction thread and it ended up his first sub had failed. But, I don't have money in my budget for a Danley, so I may have to be careful not to over deaden the room!

Quick question I haven't found an answer to in the forum threads... what's the purpose of a stage below the screen? Is it just aesthetics or does it affect the sound in the room? Some of the curved stages people here have built look incredible! Is it form or function?