What do do "behind" my screen wall? drywall? open studs?

The screen wall is built after you build your double drywall bunker theater. Don't even think about open studs. You can then cover the wall with your acoustical treatment of choice.

+ 1 for what Big said. This area is a vitally important one for acoustics and sound isolation. Behind my screen wall I have 3 x LCR speakers plus 2 subs. I have Clips, Channel, 2x 5/8 drywall with Green Glue. I then have 2 inches of acoustic high density batts and will need to make some bass traps to tame the subs a bit and get the most out of them.

There is a stack of info on AVS about acoustic treatments. Enjoy your read!
Cheers
Greg

Far be it from me to offer you any more than layman's advice in this area. Ted, Big and some of the other contributors are emminently qualified to offer you more than anecdotal advice. However, If you don't have any isolation treatment on this wall, sound will travel into your frame and then throughout other areas of the house. This is called Flanking and can cause disturbance to others elsewhere in the home. Best bet is to beef up your walls, ceiling and floor with lots of mass and decoupling so that minimal sound gets through. You will also require fluffy insulation in all cavities to stop any resonance issues. My advice would be to spend some money and treat the room properly first. There is a plethora of articles on these issues at the sound proofing company website. Before you seal up that wall or go any further, best to read read read and then address the issues. Once your room is well isolated, then you can start to look at acoustic treatments to better tailor the sound to your room.

Best of luck

Greg

If you are going to finish a room, finish it. Open studs is not finished and while you can justify that you could care less about that wall, leaving a long list of simple things you will fix before you sell the house is only a delusion that you will actually have the time or ability when that day comes.

Hi Chris (I am assuming that's you!),

Finishing your room will provide more than aesthetic benefits. Properly constructing your walls will form a part of your acoustic treatments. I am guessing you understand that isolation measures are different than acoustic treatments, although properly constructing your walls will give you the best possible start in dealing with in-room acoustics later down the track. If you have different surfaces (drywall, bricks, etc) then you will have different acoustic properties. This is far from ideal. Out of sight is still of concern. If nothing else, you will know that it's not finished. Not sure if that would bother you but it would annoy me for years. Maybe I'm just OCD?

If you are serious about improving your listening experience, build your walls with lots of mass. You may think it's overkill and hardcore, but you will thank yourself later when you go to sell the home or even when you want to turn the volume up without disturbing others. It will also sound better, retain temperature better, be properly insulated and be a more pleasant place to spend time.

Ultimately, you need to work within your budget, but after following builds by Bigmouth in DC and several others here, I bit the bullet, spent the money and constructed my room properly. I am very happy that I did. It's not finished yet but already I am thrilled with the sonic benefits that a solid, sealed room brings to my acoustics.

Sound isolation is actually quite beneficial to keep the noise floor in the room down. My room is pretty well attenuated and this makes it much easier to hear leaves rustling, wind, whispered dialogue, etc. This really adds to the experience and lets you forgets you're in your basement. Nothing worse than hearing the toilet flushing, water running, furnace blowing, etc. during a film. In addition, a well sealed room gives you free room gain with regards to bass.

In my room, I didn't finish the area behind the false screen wall, which is just framing and fabric. The stage behind the screen is unfinished plywood where my speakers, subs, and stands sit, and there is the drywall soundproofing envelope covered with broad-band absorptive material, as well as some superchunk bass traps. Here's a finished pic:


DSC_9205 by matthewcummings99, on Flickr

My screen wall was already drywall (I started with a finished room), so I created a sort of hat-channel framing to go behind the screen. I made this out of 1"x2". This framing gave the screen, and the black velvet around the screen, a means of support. Between the framing, I glued and nailed up lineacoustic on the entire screen wall. I painted the framing black in case the wood showed through the velvet, which I found later that it would have.

Oops, not sure what happened with my photos so I'm re-submitting them.