"Shh, No Talking" Home Theater...

Well, I wanted to get my layout drawing in a thread and figured it might be a good idea to start my build thread at the same time. The process will be slow right now but I'm getting very anxious to start it which means the itch will take over very shortly

Here is the layout of my planned speaker/seating/screen placement. Each square in the layout represents (1) foot...



I am not 100% sure what I will be doing for the LFE department but have a few ideas (THTLP or IB).

The room is gutted right now with a bare wooden floor suspended over concrete. The ceiling is a drop ceiling only 6.5 ft high. The right side wall and screen wall have the basement concrete walls behind them and the left and rear walls have the rest of the basement behind those. I believe the walls are made from 1/2 or 3/8 drywall over studs because the room was the previous owners man cave so I'm sure it's nothing special. I'm not sure if I should do another layer of drywall with greenglue in between or what, that's one of the areas where I you guys won't mind coming in to play. I don't need the room to be sound proof, although I'm sure it will help. Mainly, I just want the room to be a nice solid room for some nice solid surround sound

I plan on using a Panasonic 4000 projector throwing an image on a CIH screen and probably DIY 6.1 in-wall speakers (still in the air though). I guess I'm looking for things you see that might be a problem and things you think I am missing. I'm fairly new to the HT game but have been doing my research like crazy!

I'm looking forward to posting my progress and for any help you guys throw at me along the way. I will take pictures in the next few days of my actual room and we will go from there

To be continued...

No faith, lol. These are what I was planning to use for a row of 4...

http://seatsandchairs.com/home-theat...6&idcategory=4

I have done mucho planning and research, not saying everything is correct though ;-)

I will add more of my ideas tonight. Thanks for the feedback so far!

I will take a look around the small theater builds more, seeing others builds always gives me ideas

Also, do you mean the max screen size for my planned seating distance?

So it looks like I can sit around 10-11 ft, have plenty of room in the back, make my screen around 95" and maybe just do a set of 3 seats (so badly wanted 4 though). As far as sitting at 10 ft, I'm just afraid of seeing pixels like I would if I sat about 5-6 feet from my 58" plasma.. hmm.

The only things THX doesn't say is what size a CIH screen should be at a given seating distance

I think that by using the panny projector though, I might not have any problems, but still worried..

Thanks for the diagram, but how do I read the numbers? The diagram doesn't quite make sense to me... Sorry, I don't meant to seem to ignorant :-/

Alright, I've done a little more thinking. It would be a stretch from what I originally planned but shouldn't be toooo bad to pull off .... I COULD extend the rear wall out to around 18', that should leave me plenty of room for (2) rows of (3) seats, I just got to make sure that the projected image will clear heads in the back row. I think I'm going to order (1) seat for now so I can do some mockups, get an idea for how high the riser would have to be, etc.

Tomorrow I should be able to post some pics of my room and surroundings

I still don't understand what the width and height dimensions are for and if they're in feet or meters... either way, I don't have much leeway anyway so my seating and screen size is limited

Since I'm throwing around the idea of extending the rear wall out about 4 feet in order to fit 2 rows, what is the basic setup for the rear surrounds? (Not the 6th speaker, but the side/rears). Would it be above and slightly behing the rear viewers heads? I would like the surround effects to be similiar in both rows, it it possible?

Tomorrow I will also post up the shots I took of my room. Stay tuned

So the numbers provided are for multiplying them to the screen size to get your seating distance. Understood, thank you

Ok, so I'm about ready to start ripping that back wall down and extending the room a bit. But, before I do, I wanted someones opinion on if that would definitely be an ok idea or not. I just don't want the new size room to be acoustically "worse" than before or have it harder to place my speakers to sound right for both rows. Right now it's about 14 x 10.5, the new size will be about 18 x 10.5

Any thoughts?

No, it's not a load bearing wall. I just want to make sure I'm not making it into a "no-no" shaped room (example, square room). I also want to make sure that the room isn't too long for it's width and that I can still setup a good surround sound field in it.

Well it looks like my room will be an appropriate size according to a calculation I found of W = 1.6 x H and L = 2.6 x H. My ceiling will be about 7' so a width of 10.5' and length of 18' should work out well. I'm kind of relieved. Now I can have 2 rows of 3 seats :-)

I'm also thinking of swapping the room around and have my screen on the opposite wall, then I can do some IB's below the screen.

Hmm..

Quick update!

Today I started gutting the room. I took down the drop ceiling so I can do sheetrock instead for a taller room, removed all of the old sheetrock and insulation from the walls to remove some old wiring and prepare for new. I also plan on taking down the wall this week and put up the new.

Here are a few of my current ideas and questions...

1st, would it be a good idea to use XPS (blue board/pink board) or Polyisocyanurate vs cotton candy insulation? I heard it's a bit better for sound proofing and a hell of a lot less itchy when istalling

2nd, I have no idea where I am going to put the new door, was hoping for a few ideas once I post pics. My options are a bit limited but advice is welcome.

Last for now, I will skim through the construction ideas in the mean time, but the room right now is just 2x4's, 16 on center I think, and I don't have the option to do staggared beams on the other three walls but would it be a good idea to do a staggared setup on the new wall especially since my new plan for sub's is an IB setup?

I will post pictures this week, stay tuned!

Good to know, the previous owners has the room built with fiberglass insulation all the way around when 2 of the walls are against concrete. So, do I need rigid insulation along with fiberglass on the concrete walls or just the rigid stuff? Also, when I do drywall, since 2 of the walls are against concrete, do I need to do the whole DD/GG/Clips on those 2 walls as well?

I'm going from 14 -18 ft so I can fit 2 rows of 3 seats. Originally I wanted to do a row of 4 even though I knew they would be a little close to the side walls for good surround but wanted more than 3 so I decided to make the room bigger in order to fit more than just a couple of seats


Lol, damn cell phones ruin a good movie

You are NOT making this easy on me, lol. Since all of the walls are arleady up, I really don't want to be re-doing 3 walls when the original plan was just for one Do you really think it's necessary?

I did rip off all of the old sheetrock and insulation with in the last 2 days, they are bare and ready for new drywall.

I will post up pictures tomorrow so you (and everyone else) can have a better idea of what I'm looking at