The Cinemar Home Theater Construction Thread - Page 8

Ok. It's been about 7 months since I've posted here. Needless to say, it's hard to work on a theater during the summer.

I came to the stark realization that my basement is filled with junk and starting any type of construction down there would be nearly impossible. So over the past few months I've been organizing things, throwing junk away, giving things to Goodwill and selling things on eBay. My basement/theater plans are a little more fleshed out now so I'm still moving slowly but surely.

I also needed to clean up 4 miles of cabling from the first floor in the future media/storage area. I logged an incredible late night hours doing that. The 5" round cabling going under the stairway is all extra's that I haven't tapped into yet. I wish I would have taken a picture before I cleaned up the rack. If you think it looks messy now...you should have seen it. Once I had that somewhat cleaned up, I ran sensors to all the lower level windows to detect if they are left open. Added sensors to the sliding patio doors. Also ran power cable to select windows for controlling window treatments.







I also put down some Rustoleum basement floor epoxy in the storage area.

I have an electrician coming over next week to do some work upstairs before I add the zoned basement heating ductwork.


I also realized that it's been almost a year since I bought the PTAE4000 projector. This is actually my second projector purchase since attempting to complete my theater.
I happened to be doing a little research on Receivers and noticed a good deal on an Onkyo TX-NR3008 that I picked up today. So there's my other motivation. It'll stink to take a hit on an outdated projector and a receiver.

I should have some more renderings soon as I finalize some things.

Hi Jeff.
Thanks for popping in. Yeah, you are a hop and a skip from me. I'd be happy to pass along info and contacts to you.
I'll sleep great at night when the theater is done knowing I have the generator. It's come in handy about five or six times already.

It's now officially a race to see who starts their theater first. :;

So based on my limited knowledge, it appears the best place for me to place a 2nd subwoofer in my current plan is in the diagnol corner (rear left) from the front sub. I realize a more optimal position would be the middle front and middle back of the room...but the theater would be useless unless I can get in the room. AFAIK, it doesn't really matter vertically where the sub is position. If that holds true, I could position it behind the acoustic fabric in the corner just above the chair rail. Thoughts? Option 2 might be to place a Triad Mini Inwall Sub into my left rear surround column.



Does anyone know if having crown moulding actually helps with the acoustics as far as bass goes? It would seem it would since the corners would no longer be square.

Moggie - if you are still tuned in, I liked your idea of building traps into the soffit. I may be unable to do it on one side of the room...but from my understanding, bass traps do not necessarily need to be room symetrical.

Also, since I'm raising the front half of the room about 6", I'm wondering if I could design a bass trap out of that somehow. Ideas?

I've now lowered the chair rail to allow for placement of 1" acoustic on the top half of the walls. I'm still trying to figure out what I'll do with the lower half. Another user mentioned to possibly turn them into bass traps. But I'm not 100% it will be effective if it's part of a bigger mass like the columns.

I'm considering a painted Night Sky Mural instead of Fiber Optic Lighting for the stars. It should be much cheaper, allow me to place more stars, I can do it later if I want and most importantly, it will save me a ton of time and labor.

I'm still tossing around the idea of slimming down or getting rid of two of the columns in the room. I have very little walkway between the last row of seats and the side walls/columns. The front stage is still a work in progress too.

Hi Jon_B and Roger,

Thanks. Yeah it appears midwall placement is ideal for Subs. I thought putting them in diagnol corners was the next bext thing according to Floyd E. Toole's Sound Reproduction book...but perhaps I misread it.

My M&K sub is pretty massive which makes it challenging to even fit it vertically underneath the screen in the middle of the room. (EDIT: Looks like I could squeeze it underneath the screen - I may see if I can move the door somehow) Midwall on the sides doesn't seem possible either - it lands right at my first step and would block access.

I guess I'm just trying to save some bucks on buying more subs if the difference is marginal. I just don't want to spend another $2k+ on subs.

If I could get some less expensive sub for the other front wall (left side) and then two inwall subs for the rear - i could mount the rear subs in the columns.
From a soundproofing perspective...I'm not sure how smart it is to put a Sub in the actual contstructed wall. Any thoughts on how much sound goes out the back side of the wall with these inwall subs?

Assuming I have four subs, can I get away with something less expensive like a Triad Bronze InWall sub? (Although I don't think they'll fit into my columns...but I can probably cheat them.

So I think I can squeeze the sub into the front center stage below the screen. I could pick up a smaller sub and place it to the side of the doorway. This would put the rear sub at about 2'6" off center of the front sub. Or I could move the front sub to align with the rear and both would be off center of the room by 2'6". Any thoughts on this?

Moggie,

I might have to take advantage of the AVS forum / Dennis Erskine service available. Just prepping for the build has turned more costly than expected so I'm trying to keep costs down. With that said, I can only imagine the number of surprise expenses I'll encounter when I start it.

GRBoomer,
AFAIK, the Onkyo 3008 I ordered should handle the two subs.

One concern is a lot of the results we read about are based on rectangle rooms. My fear is planning so much only to find out it really didn't matter because of the variety of items in the room or the non-perfect rectangle.

Regardless, I pushed forward with trying to manipulate the room to get a second sub close to the middle of the back of the room. I came pretty close so. About 10" off center which I doubt will make much difference. Another option is to build the sub into the counter behind the back row. I'm assuming that would be too close?



I ended up bumping out a little niche for the sub into the foyer to the theater. Which will force me to double stud wall, DD/GG the foyer as well. One thought is to put a rotating rack above the Sub just above the chair rail lines. The sub would be contained and not viewable from the foyer. I could then build a grill using trim that matches the room for the sound to travel out. I realize Subs are not as directional as speakers, so hopefully this is fine.



I have room in the theater for a rack already so I'm not sure I want to move it out of the theater. It would make it a little easier if it was in the theater for wiring. And really I'm not sure what else I would put there. I'm not sure how much noise would be generated by any of the components I plan on putting in there.

My other concern is if I place the components in the foyer, then I'd probably also have to consider a vent and return in there in addition to the theater. Just opens more cans of worms as far as sound proofing goes. Without the rack in there, I don't think I'd have to worry about it. I could instead use that space as a Bass trap or just put a counter top on it to dress up the foyer.

I also played around with other ideas of trying to squeeze the sub into the existing room. Here are some of those concepts. I just thought if I went this route, it would either force me to eliminate the back bar and seating. It starts to get pretty tight so I've been trying to leave that space open.

This was a concept to redoing the front of the stage due to moving the sub to the middle of the room. The side boxes I planned for are no longer required, but I still think they look cool so I might just stick with them.

This version would certainly be less time consuming and costly to build though.

Chip pointed me to this information. So I played around with the idea. This would actually provide a 4" ledge along the chair rail. Construction-wise I don't think it would be built the same way as shown in the GIF above, but I think the concept is 1/4" plywood with the rigid fiberglass and then an air gap.

Here's an idea I thought of today for those that have fixed racks that are mounted up against a wall. Mount a full size mirror behind it. This will allow you to see where you are reaching when making connections.

So assuming I find a way to put my rack outside of the theater. I'm thinking I could use the old rack location in the upper left corner of my plan to build a dead vent. There happens to be a cold air return that services the first floor in the joists above that location. Does it make sense to route the air flow into the cold air return or better to try to route it into the basement in an adjoining room?

I'd hate to start heating the upstairs during the summer if I'm pulling out too much heat...although my basement is usually 5-6 degrees cooler than the upstairs. I'm ok with a little sound leakage into any of the basement rooms but definitely not the upstairs rooms.

Still torn on where I'm going to put the equipment rack. If I build it above the rear sub, I may quickly run out of room to put components. I'm sure I could fit them now, but as you guys know, you quickly start adding amplifiers, butt kickers, etc. I'm not sure the extra heat in the room will be an issue since it's typically cooler in my basement. Not sure if the equipment would heat the room up more than 5-6 degrees. But maybe it would if the room is pretty air tight. Some were complaing about noise, but none of my components appear to have any noise to them...the fans to ventilate I guess will add some.


I also tracked down a local company to build my DBox motion platform from aluminum.

Also got a plan to Ted to get my soundproofing budget into the books.

I recently setup my new Onkyo 3008 and wow - it feels like I just went out and bought all new speakers. My existing room is terrible acoustically. A large picture window on one side, high ceilings and the only thing soft is the carpet. After running through the Audyssey, it really made a tremendous difference. I can actually hear the dialog now without having to turn on subtitles. I can only imagine how it's going to sound in a more controlled theater room! The extra speakers really add dimension to the sound space. The high speakers make it sound like there is a big wall coming at you. I'm definitely planning for an 11.2 theater at this point. I realize the 3008 is only capable of 9.2 at one time, but I'll be prepared for the next generation.

Here's a rendering with the rack in the back of the room. I think I'm just going to have to plan for a potential couple locations. Then once I have the outer shell built I can make that decision after I see how the room responsds to the ducts and returns. I can always just put a cabinet and counter inside the room.



Here's a top down view of the latest concept - work in progress as usual:

JTR7,

Yes - I'll be keeping my existing home automation rack where it is.
I've thought about just putting all the theater equipment next to that rack but just thought it might be a bit easier with the cable runs if it were closer to the theater. I'd also have to check on the longest runs the DBOX allows if I think the PC will be too far away. Another issue would be I'd have to run cabling through the basement or preplan so I can still plugin my mic for the Audyssey EQ with my Onkyo reciever.

I like your idea though of placing some of the hotter components in the home automation rack. I'm just not sure what hardware I'll add/remove down the road so keeping it together would be a little simpler.

Anyone know how hot those XPA amplifiers get?

I think the XBOX360 is probably the loudest thing component-wise. And that will most likely remain in my home automation rack.

JTR7,
I do have a matrix switch that distributes all the sources to each room. It's pretty cool to play Guitar Hero on the two XBOX 360's and battle with some in the adjoining room - although I hardly get to "play" anymore. Movies are fed from a central server. But I will need a dedicated MLP-1000 (Movie Player) for the theater that will also run the DBOX software to make the first row seats sync to the movie.

deewan,

Thanks. It's been fun, but I'm ready to start seeing something built.
I may add an XPA amp down the road as budget permits. That might help with cooling down the Onkyo Reciever if it becomes an issue. The Onkyo receiver does make some clicking noises during certain remote tasks so it might be nice to keep that one out of the room. It has a serial port so I should be able to automate control of it without a problem and operate it from a remote or touch screen. I'm still deciding on whether to put a dedicated touchscreen in there, use the big onscreen for movie selection or just something like an iPad. I may just put an inwall touchscreen just outside of the theater near the future bar area. That way it can service both the theater and operate the whole house.


JTR7,
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have regarding the Cinemar home automation and media management solutions. Although, you may need some type of backup generator regardless for power outages. Our system is very ala carte. You start with the basic parts and build off that foundation to control and automate anything and everything.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Ted White this week and started going over how to handle soundproofing the room. I've got some wireframes of how the walls and ceilings will be constructed as well as the soffit mufflers. I will post some images once we have the details nailed down.

I was hoping to build the outer shell first, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. So I really need to run chases or wire to where I plan to use it.

On a somewhat related yet unrelated note, we initially we're discussing building an exterior garage/outdoor covered patio in our backyard, but put that on the back burner until the basement/theater gets done.

Here are some renderings I did for the external garage a while back. I need to plan ahead to make sure I can get wiring to it before I close off the basement in case we ever pull the trigger.




Here's a glimpse of the proposed bar just outside the theater.

rader,

Thanks for your comments.
Actually Ghost Recon is a great multiplayer shoot'em up game...but it's even better when each player has their own full screen.

I really don't know anything about IB arrays, so I'd have to do alot more research in that area. Perhaps you can give me the pros/cons summarized and what's involved.

From reading Floyd Tooles book, his research recommended symetrical subs in front and back so I'd have to find a way to fit 4 subs. Which isn't totally impossible if I want to build them into the corners. It's just where do you draw the line. If I did go with four subs, I could put each in the four corners of the room as long as they are fairly small in size.

I wish I could push the projector back that far, but the throw distance is too far.

Anyone happen to know if Berkline's 45003 will fit through a 32" door? I had to reduce the door size to make room for the sub in the rear and get it as close to center as possible. It would really stink if I had to sit on the floor after all of this.