The Little Theater That Could - Start to Almost Finished

March 2013 update. Projector died yesterday and I have been tearing my "finished" room to pieces installing some serious bass. See end of thread for gory details.

 

 

 

The Small Room: 13' X 14' with 8' ceilings in the corner of my basement. Obstacles include ducting and a support beam along one side, electrical and water access in one corner and 16 feet of narrow windows along two sides.

The Equipment: Some old, some new.
- Receiver: Pioneer VSX-919 ($385) 7.1 receiver
- Speakers: Camber 3.5ti fronts & center ($1200), Mission surrounds ($35 garage sale).
- Subwoofer: Quasi-moto mix of 2X12" car subs driven by a vintage Kenwood amp. $400
- Source: PS3 ($300)
- Screen - White over silver Spandex acoustically transparent - constant area 112" wide ($100)
- Projector: Acer 5360 ($580) (Died of fan failure March 22, 2013 RIP)
Total equipment - $3000 purchased over the last 15 years.
Total room construction with acoustical treatment - $1500.
Total theater cost - $4500
The Setup:
Viewing distance - 9.5 feet.
Projector - 14 feet using a mirror to gain the required throw distance.

Edited by DavidK442 - 3/23/13 at 4:52am

The middle row of Pot lights are on and dimmed during movies. The lights are small and located deep inside the can so there is no direct light hitting your eyes. Also, because they are pushed right up against the 10" drop ceiling there is no direct light landing on the screen wall. The two Pots in front shine on the bank of drawers and equipment shelves along the front below the screen.

The room is narrow. 13 feet isn't much to work with, especially when 2 feet is taken up by cabinets and the neighboring bedroom's closet.

I left the bulk head over the cabinets open and filled it with 6" Rocksol to act as a bass trap. Due to the small room the seating is pushed up against the walls. To reduce behind head reflections the drywall was left off between the studs on the South and West walls.

This shows the corner bass trap taking shape. The electrical panel and water shutoff were a royal pain but are now neatly hidden behind hinged doors. The reclining sofa is a hand me down from the in-laws. Light colored and ugly but very comfortable. For now it stays, as does the light colored laminate floor.

A better shot of the corner which became a bass trap. Trying to make an integrated installation that was reasonably symetrical with the other half of the room was not easy.

Here is the bass trap in the opposite corner. Building the traps out away from the wall allowed me to run a 14 inch shelf between them underneath the window. Should make a good home for the projector. The window covers are 1/4 mdf sheets in slides.

Out of build sequence but here is a better shot of the bulkhead above the screen. Both areas, behind and in front of the support beam were filled with insulation to act as a bass trap. I had contemplated filling the entire area behind the screen (8' wide X 5' high x 14" deep) with insulation to also aid in bass absorption but after hanging a quilt across this area found that the room became too acousticaly dead. Will maybe just add corner traps beside my front speakers instead. I've seen many home theaters with the walls covered in acoustic panels floor to ceiling with thick carpets on the floor so I was suprised how aweful a little more absorption sounded in my room. Every setup is different I suppose.

Rail and style frames wrapped in black speaker cloth cover the bass traps and sound absorbers, held in place by wood trim.

I removed the drivers and cross-over from my side and rear surround speakers and built enclosures to angle them down from the wall/ceiling junction. The angles are different, with the rears more steeply sloped than the sides. I used speaker grill snaps but should have gone with velcro as they turned out to be a bit flimsy.

The front main speakers were built into custom cabinets like the surrounds. The baffles were angled 35 degrees to cross fire for better imaging. This also allowed me to make the cabinets an inch narrower which was necessary to fit a 106" screen between them. You can just see the velvet covered frame I built to reduce reflections on the ceiling immediately over the screen while allowing good air exchange for the bass trap above.

The screen is an Accuscreen 106" acoustically transparent. Assembled easily and no visible weave at about 7 feet.

Sansui AU11000a Integrated


Kenwood KA-9100 Integrated


Pioneer SA-8800 Integrated and TX-7800 Tuner


Sony TA-5A Integrated and ST-A3A Tuner


Kenwood KA-5700 Integrated and Pioneer SA-7500II Integrated


Pioneer, Harmon Kardon and Marantz Receivers
(I drag the Pioneer out along with a pair of Paradigm Titan bookshelves for outdoors movie night.)