Acoustic preparation of theater room questions.

I've tried to read as much as I can on acoustics for a home theater and, quite frankly, it makes my brain hurt. I've spent most of my life learning everything I can on a variety of topics from electronics to automotive to string theory, and I am always willing to try and learn more, but there is just too much information on acoustics and it all seems to be experience based and laced with too much opinion for me to get a firm grasp on. So, I'm defaulting the experience of the people here for some general guidance on building my next theater, cause from what I read, I got it COMPLETELY wrong when building my dad's theater, and I think it sounds pretty damn decent for being a few years old now.

1) primary acoustic treatment should be done from the floor to ear height on the side walls, and likely on the rear wall? What should be done above that treatment? I was thinking 2" acoustic treatment to ~48" with a chair rail then loose curtains above to the ceiling for a smooth and consistent look throughout the room, AT curtains around the screen on the false front wall. I'll likely have a 12-14" riser for the rear row and angle the lower wall treatment up at the stairs then level it off at the riser again to maintain the ~48" height from the top of the riser. What about carpet, just nice, pretty plush carpet?

2) the entire front wall should be acoustically treated including bass traps? I'm not sure I've actually grasped how a bass trap functions, or why it's necessary, but I've concluded it is, so I'll install them, I figure 1' squares of insulation cut diagonally and stacked in the corners behind my screen wall should suffice? Then the same insulation installed on the wall itself, R19 fiberglass? Other options? I've read foam = bad.

3) speaker location, THX 7.1 is outdated and not used, we went a little crazy in my dad's theater, but it sounds good so I'm thinking of emulating it, with some improvements. LCR will have two speakers per channel, just below and above the non-AT screen set just behind AT material on the false screen wall. Two speakers for the surrounds, one placed ~18" in front of each row of seating at ~7' from the ground, finally two speakers per channel of rear surround, two placed at the rear row of seating firing slightly forward and two ~6' apart in a 10' wide room on the rear wall. Subwoofers will be dual 12" at the front, ~6' apart behind the false screen wall and two 10" subs behind the rear row of seats roughly the same distance apart. Sound about right?

4)I'll be doing a 12" soffit around the room at the ceiling for running speaker wires and because I think they look nice, I'm hoping to mount the projector inside the rear soffit, but I was considering doing and angled soffit to look like a tray ceiling instead of a square one, any advantages or disadvantages of this style?

5) I don't mind the sound bleeding out into the entire rest of the house, or even outside a little, so long as it doesn't make it into my neighbors houses or piss anyone off, I just want to make sure it sounds good from inside the room.

Wow, thanks for the useful addition, I don't suppose you have any book suggestions? My dad's theater all ready has a similar layout to this and it sounds great, can you give me any useful information at all?

Thank for the addition, I'll actually be heading to my local bookstore to find some of these later today.

For your point about keeping sound out, not necessarily in, I don't really see how they could be mutually exclusive, unless a barrier worked like a one way mirror, except for sound. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking the wrong details, I should just worry about keeping noise out and ignore sound leakage except as a bi-product of keeping noise out? I'm practically deaf as it is, too much time next to angle grinders, really loud speakers(concerts) and open headers, so I play music and movies too loud as it is.

I think you mis-understood my post, I meant that the THX standard for speaker placement in 7.1 with the rear surrounds right next to each other is out-dated based on the fact that it's based on their 6.1 standard, with two speakers instead of 1 in the rear and with the left and right surrounds moved forward a bit. 7.1 in general is not outdated, it can't be, there's nothing better yet. I meant no harm or foul, was just hoping for this exact kind of information over a basic "you're stupid, try again" post. I do really appreciate any creative input, including, go read this or that book.

EDIT:Oh, and as to the subs, that positioning was based on the THX and DD room layout examples, my dad's set-up(one of the only I've heard in person) and the theater build threads that seem to mostly have the subs firing into the listening area from the front wall. Let me re-state that I'm no expert and not hoping to achieve acoustic perfection, I'm just hoping to make sure I've got the right general idea, if they should be firing backwards and you can back that up with something, I'll likely have them fire backwards.

Just to make sure I understand you, comb filtering is sound arriving at the listener with a delay effect because of the different distances from the speakers, right? If so I know exactly what you mean, but I have to admit I've noticed it more in actual movie theaters than in my dad's set-up, which I'll admit is still different than what I was proposing, but that's why I listed the exact distances I was thinking of putting them, because I was trying to center the audio around a point in the center of the room and right between the two rows of seating to prevent that echo effect that I have noticed before. Am I just all wet in my thinking?

You're right, I didn't specify well, I was intending on doing the entire front wall with R19, between the bass trap, I was intending on cutting the 2' widths of insulation into 2' squares, then cutting those diagonally so that the legs would be a full 2' and stacking them up both corners, to the full 8' ceiling height.

"pissed in your cereal" is a pretty common expression amongst military of my fathers generation from best I can tell, I've heard it and do tend to use it from them, but I can also see from the perspective of someone who's never heard it before not understanding it's inference.

As for my brain being supposed to hurt, it doesn't surprise me, in college I would get similar headaches studying for astrophysics exams, and I thusly know better than to be an astrophysicist, I have no hopes or intentions of ever being an expert at this, I just want to make sure my theater doesn't sound like crap.

Apparently everyone, myself included was a little grumpy yesterday, let's try again, shall we. I'm not smart with this stuff, my first post lists a bunch of assumtions I've made based on my limited reading thus far, which apparently has been the absolute wrong things to read, I'm going to attack better reading as I can, which isn't too limited for time.

I really appreciate the book suggestions, thanks.

I really appreciate Big's post about comb filtering, that's exactly the kind of post I was hopping for, I know my ideas are swiss cheese, I just don't know where the holes are.

My verbage is clearly lacking lately, I'm having a very hard time putting what I think I understand into a coherent thought. Please be patient with me, I'm not trying to be an ass or be blatantly dense, this stuff is just WAY outside my normal realm of understanding. I thought I did pretty decently on the comb filtering though

I don't quite have the budget for 16 subs, but I all ready have four specifically for the theater, on one each wall seems like it would get in the way pretty badly, but in the corners at the rear of the room would be quite do-able, in the very corners at the front should be fine as well, I just want to make sure I don't get them too close to my front left and right channel though, that was the reason for moving them in from the side walls slightly, as I can't afford an AT screen to put the speakers behind on my budget.