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Rob Hahn Theater build

188K views 479 replies 130 participants last post by  kezug 
#1 · (Edited)
About 8 years ago, I went to Detroit to visit Art Sonnenborn and Jeff (thebland) so I could experience their theaters, hoping to pick their brains about the best way to approach building my own home theater. I also went to Texas to see Ash Sharma's theater and Lon's (LJG) theater in Long Island.

I can't thank them enough for inviting me into their homes and allowing me to pummel them with zillions of questions. When I was at Art's, Mark Seaton (who was kind enough to hang out with us) mentioned that I should consider Keith Yates as the designer for my room. I said, "Who's that?"

8 years later, I know who Keith Yates is. :) I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time right now to do an extensive build, but I've got a few photos I can share - mostly showing the finished theater. If people are interested, I can try & upload photos of the entire process (I documented everything). There's a thread that Art started after visiting my theater for the first time last week, where you'll find some descriptions of the theater dimensions and equipment

Here's the link: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/86-ultra-hi-end-ht-gear-20-000/2519561-evening-rob-hahn.html

Before I go into the details of the room, let's just start with some photos. These first 4 are of the projection room:







 

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#2 · (Edited)
We extensively remodeled our home, gutting half of it & tearing down & rebuilding the other half (the theater section). This allowed us to completely control the space. It was highly important to me that I had enough height to do 4-way masking. I also wanted a fairly wide theater (I don't like shoebox sized commercial theaters).

The largest screen size I could have was 19' - so that's what we ended up with. The exterior box that houses the theater space (as you can see from the pics) became much smaller as we added framing, acoustic treatments, HVAC, etc. These next 5 pictures show the progression of the size of the room from construction to finished product:









 

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#25 ·
We extensively remodeled our home, gutting half of it & tearing down & rebuilding the other half (the theater section). This allowed us to completely control the space. It was highly important to me that I had enough height to do 4-way masking. I also wanted a fairly wide theater (I don't like shoebox sized commercial theaters).

The largest screen size I could have was 19' - so that's what we ended up with. The exterior box that houses the theater space (as you can see from the pics) became much smaller as we added framing, acoustic treatments, HVAC, etc. These next 5 pictures show the progression of the size of the room from construction to finished product:










One question -- why frame in and install windows then board over them? Did you intend at first to have windows and use a lighting control (curtains)?
 
#4 ·
Here are 4 pictures showing the back of the theater from the same angle in various stages (the last one I panned my camera to the right a little to show the size of the screen):







 

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#5 ·
Next are 3 pictures showing some of the woodwork and fabric, and a 4th pic showing the view from the 3rd row. We used SketchUp and GoToMeeting during the schematic design phase, since Keith's company is on the West coast and I'm on the East coast. In real time, I could ask them to zoom into a specific molding, in 3D, and make adjustments right then & there. They'd upload the the latest design of the theater in SketchUp and I could walk through the theater - it was amazing and extremely helpful. We had to find acoustically transparent fabric, not only for the speakers hidden behind the fabric but also for all the acoustic treatment.

I worked a long time on the design with Keith. I wanted the movie experience to be all encompassing, but I was worried that making a bat cave would be uncomfortable and oppressive. So we built a hybrid. The back half of the room has warm wood and carpet, classic moldings, but the front half surrounding the screen is black. When sitting in the 2nd row, there is only black... The 4th pic, as mentioned shows the view from the 3rd row.







 

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#6 ·
Next are 3 pictures from the entrance (and one of the ceiling). 1st shows the huge baffle wall that houses the 3 JBL M2 (not installed yet in this pic). The hourglass shapes (6 of them, the 3 below are hard to see) contain 2 24" UberSubs, facing each other - 12 subwoofers total. Also under each center seat in Rows 2 & 3, is one UberSub (so 14 in total). There are also 8 custom designed JL subs sprinkled throughout the room, 22 subs in all.

2nd picture is the finished room...

3rd picture shows what's happening 'behind the curtain.' I'm a cinematographer (Director of Photography) so I had a lot of fun designing the lighting scheme to showcase all the speakers and acoustic treatments behind the fabric.

The 4th picture shows the ceiling and what's behind the fabric. There are 10 speakers in the ceiling (it's an Atmos theater)...







 

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#462 · (Edited)
The only other place I've ever seen lighting like that was in the Omnimax (since renamed the Giant Dome:https://wgntv.com/2017/05/31/msi-giant-movie/) theater at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago. Seeing the JBL speakers behind the perforated screen was almost as exciting as the first feature film I saw there; "To Fly". Here's some more history about the IMAX/OMNIMAX film format. http://www.thefullwiki.org/OMNIMAX (sorry if off-topic)

I second that on buying a few lottery tickets. ;)
 
#15 ·
Thanks! I should add that Geoff Franklin of The Projection Room is responsible for the incredible video portion of the theater, including all the _amazing_ wiring of the theater. He & Keith have worked on many projects together so the coordination between them was fluid & flawless...

As I get time, I will upload more pictures. Funny you should mention a video - I actually captured the entire process on 8 timelapse cameras. Talk about editing issues! I don't know if I'll _ever_ get to do it, but I'd love to put all the footage together some day. Problem is, there are too many movies to catch up on!

-Rob
 
#30 · (Edited)
Keith had very stringent requirements for the fabric for the walls. It had to be acoustically transparent to allow the acoustic treatment to do its thing, and I wanted it to be the right color and have some texture. There wasn't a lot to choose from frankly. We got tons of samples and Keith had to ok each one. It was vastly important to find what we were going to use because the choice would ultimately drive the color of the carpet, the wood stain color, etc.

I used Lucifer recessed fixtures in the main part of the theater. I had originally spec'd these fixtures to be more recessed because I didn't want the trims to be visible during a film (from the screen reflection). But when we did that, you couldn't see the light from the fixture when you entered the theater. You just saw these black holes in the ceiling fabric - it looked weird. So we had to make custom sleeves to lower the fixtures. We had to do that because the ceiling fabric had already been installed. The ceiling fabric can be removed, but it's a much bigger deal than removing the side panels.

Speaking of which, we came up with a great solution to access all the side & rear speakers and acoustic treatments - the fabric is attached to frames that are held in place by magnets. We sewed in little tabs at the bottom of each panel that you just pull on to remove the panels. Even the large black fabric panels that flank the screen are removable.

For lighting the speakers and treatments behind the fabric, I used these mini-cylinder spotlights - Juno is the company - on tracks.

The lighting behind the screen was much more complicated. I used 6 SORAA Vivid 2 miniature spotlights on tracks shooting straight down on the acoustic treatment between the JBL M2s. To light the M2s and the UberSubs, we came up with a system using the Juno fixtures. We attached the fixtures to a black plate that was attached to the baffle wall. The black plate acts as a shield blocking the fixture from view when sitting in the seats. We mocked this up very carefully before committing because once the screen is attached, it isn't trivial to get back behind there just to do some tweaking.

I also decided to use all LED fixtures behind the screen, because they last much longer than halogens. Generally I don't like the color temperature of LEDs but in this case, it made sense. I used halogens when I lit the sides & rears cause we can easily get to those.

The ceiling was a lot of work to light. We used LED strip lighting along the beams and mocked these up very carefully as well. I had at least 6 separate lighting zones so that I could dim different areas at different levels. I wanted this amount of control because we couldn’t mock up the ceiling lighting beforehand. You could only tell what the lighting effect would look like _after_ the ceiling fabric was installed. Then it would be too late to make adjustments. So I wanted the ability & flexibility to have dimming control in many areas of the ceiling.

Here are some pictures:











 

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#19 · (Edited)
:eek: Wow. Just wow! A truly impressive project.

I'm laughing at myself for the faux pas going on in my head: - when I first started reading the thread, and you said "the first 4 are of the projection room" - I thought you meant, these 4 photos are of the theatre with a projector in it, like we're more used to seeing (I actually thought, 'well, it's a bit tall and narrow, but we're used to seeing people make best use of their limited available space.')

It was only as the thread continued that I realised, you really did mean 'the projector room' - and not the theatre! Talk about 'go big, or go home!':D

Brilliant! Just brilliant.
 
#21 ·
Keith did some of the work in my theater. He and his team (particularly Remy) are amazing.

I recognize those giant custom Yates "tube traps" up in your ceiling. In my room if I put my head next to one of those beasts in a corner placement it sounds like I've entered a sonic black hole!

Congrats on an amazing room. I'm envious!
 
#27 ·
*drool

Sent from my XR6P10 using Tapatalk
 
#28 ·
Wow what a room and well laid out. I don't see why this wouldn't be HT of the month or year. Congrats on the room. It's stunning!!! I love the three rows
of seats and the lighting and those equipment racks wow. Well designed room be very proud of it!
 
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