Mazeroth's Big Sound Little Space Build

I started construction on my basement theater about 6 months ago and have procrastinated starting a build thread. I've been derailed numerous times since I've started but I'm back on track now and hope to have this baby complete by the end of July (mark your calendars!).

A little info about the build and how I got here. I built a theater in our three bedroom ranch in the largest bedroom four years ago. The system had a 720p Mits HD1000U DLP projector on a 92" 16:9 Wilsonart Laminate screen. Speakers were a 2.1 config with Magnepan MMG's and the bass was handled by an in-floor IB housing four Dayton RSS390HF 15" subs. It was incredible! Then our first child came 3 years ago. No biggie. Two years later and our son came. Uhh...but we don't have a bedroom for him! What, you want me to take out the theater?!? Fine....

So I was kicked down into the basement. Unfortunately, our tiny ranch's basement is 40% basement and 60% crawl space, with limited room available for finishing due to the utilities. This left me with a 22w x 17d room with stairs cutting it in half. I decided to make the right side a playroom for the kids and the left side is the theater, with a footprint of 11.5w x 17d after framing. I'm an avid speaker builder and love huge speakers so sound isolation was a priority, on a budget. 3 of the four walls use IB-3 clips (wall four is a beam and I didn't want the hassle of soffitting to use clips there, amongst other headaches I won't get into). The ceiling has V-Clips and will have hat channel installed, along with DD + GG. The two non-foundation walls are 2x6 staggered stud construction. It will have a 9 channel sound system with four 15" sealed subs and buttkickers for the seats/couch. LCR speakers are DiY line arrays that will stand over 6' tall. All will be hidden behind a shallow false wall. Now you can see why I want some soundproofing!

Here's the official equipment list, all of which I have except for the screen and receiver:

Projector: Epson 8350
Screen: Seymour Center Stage XD AT (110" diag, 16:9, likely)
Receiver: Undecided Audyssey DSX 9 channel with MultEQ XT32
LCR Speakers: DiY line arrays with 24 Aura NS3-193 per side
Surrounds: Six Monoprice 8" 3-way in-walls
Subs: Quad Dayton RSS390HF sealed subs
Sub Amp: Crown XLS402
Tactile: ButtKicker BKA300 amp with ButtKicker Advance
Sources: HTPC, XBox 360, Wii (no cable TV)

Here is a current state picture with my old 92" screen, for scale:

Ok, here's where I'm at now. Before I can drywall I need to finish up a few things, such as run conduit to the projector, build backer boxes for the recessed lights and projector box and run all the wiring I need to above this room for the whole-house audio system before the ceiling drywall is installed. Nothing too complicated except I'm stuck on how to do the conduit. Under the stairs is where my equipment rack will reside. You can see in the following picture the bottom electrical box, the two speaker wire boxes (13 runs, fun!) and above that will be the box for the HDMI, Cat 6 and power bridge for the projector. I will run the HDMI and 2-3 Cat6 (for possible future use) outside of the conduit. I may even run a low gauge speaker wire for a trigger down the line, who knows. Now, where I'm having trouble is I can't run a conduit from under the stairs to the projector due to the red support pole dead center in my left wall and even if it wasn't there, getting it through the corner would prove almost impossible. What I'm thinking of doing is installing a 2 gang blue box on the back side of the screen wall, running conduit to the projector and if I ever need to use it I can always just wrap the latest and greatest wire (HDMI 2.0!) from the conduit box over to my equipment rack. It won't be pretty, but no one will ever be behind my theater to see it. Reasonable? Oh, and how many of you guys actually used in-wall rated Cat 6? I get extremely reasonable terminated Cat 6 cables from Monoprice and was thinking of using them.

Ted, I did not decouple that wall with the IB-3 clips, but I did the other three. That wall was a pain in the butt since the upper stair portion was already drywalled and in order to blend the old drywall with the new took me ripping the headers down the middle and spacing them apart since whoever framed pushed my floor joists out about an inch into the stairway. Then I would have had to build a soffit to bypass drywalling directly to the beam as I didn't want to use whisper clips on the whole wall with hat channel. I really wasn't too concerned with soundproofing but figured a $300 investment to decouple 3 walls, hat channel, green glue etc. was worth it. Trying to get that wall decoupled...not so much. I even called in a friend with 20 years of framing experience to help me frame that wall as I was at a loss.

Progress has been slow since I came down with a 104.4 fever last week but will be going full force again. I'm about to place a $300 order with Monoprice for a bunch of goodies but am having a hard time sourcing black speaker wall plates. I can find black wall plates with one set of binding posts but can't for 2 sets, of which I need 3. I considered buying white ones and painting them but would much rather have a finished product. Or, has anyone had success painting their own? Any help is greatly appreciated.

HD, thanks for the info on those keystones. I'm getting a bunch of white ones from Monoprice for the equipment closet (behind stairs) but never thought to search for black ones.

Ted, how much help would a DD+GG application of 5/8" benefit me compared to the clips? That wall is a staggered stud that will be filled with R13 and the backside will also have drywall. The door opening is a 38" RO for a 3/0 solid core door I already have. This pic should help see what I'm working with:

Yes, the speaker boxes are connected to the studs on the theater side of the staggered wall. I made sure to not let them touch the studs for the other side, as you can see how I notched out a few inches of stud depth on the studs behind them. I'm also going to make sure no screws go through the boxes from the other side. How else should I have approached this? I figured as long as they're part of the theater wall it shouldn't matter, but what does a Padawan know?

Thanks for the help, Ted.

As far as futureproofing I know everyone preaches a 1.5 - 2 inch conduit run to the projector. Do you guys feel four runs of 23 gauge CAT6 will suffice? I was going to buy the following from Monoprice instead of running a dedicated HDMI and I figure having 2 more runs of CAT6 as redundancy would be smart. Let's say in 3 years they have a new cable "technology". Shouldn't this new technology be able to run over the runs of CAT6 that I already have? Worst case (lol) any idea where I could source the larger smurf tubing in central Ohio?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...t=1#largeimage

Oh, and is the 5v option on this one necessary. They sell one without it for a few cents less.

David, I'm going with a somewhat shallow false wall since I only have 16'10" of depth to work with after drywall. I'm thinking a 10" deep false wall with wide and tall sub boxes cut on a CNC, of course! They will likely be around 4 ft3 each, sealed. I was thinking of just doing two subs with larger enclosures but I don't think I absolutely need sub 20hz. bass. With my infinite baffle sub and my handy dandy DCX2496 x-over I tested out a 25 hz. hi-pass filter just to see how much I would miss the really low bass and honestly, the experience was almost indistinguishable from the IB without a cutoff. I would be better served with the HO version since my enclosures will be smaller but since I already have the HF version I'm going to give them a shot. You can't go wrong with the Dayton RS subs if you're after awesome sound quality. If you can sacrifice a bit of SQ for output then there are better subs out there.

I do miss my dual IB's



Everyone, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not sold on making backer boxes and doing can lights in the ceiling. After the soundproofing measures I've taken on the ceiling I don't want to cut a bunch of holes in it. I watch movies and listen to music in complete darkness. I can't see myself ever needing a lot of light in the room. I'm thinking of doing four sconces on the side walls, two on each. If I ever need extra light we have a half dozen floor lamps I can take in there for temporary lighting.

For lighting control I have two Monster AVL300 remotes (yuck, but I got them dirt-cheap) that are basically re-branded Harmony 890's with Z-Wave control. They also came with an RF to infrared bridge which is super handy since my equipment will be behind my stairs. The problem I'm having is all the outlets in the theater will be black. I can not find a black dimmer light switch for Z-Wave to save my life. I'm considering putting the light switches on the other side of the wall near the door since I think they would look out of place being white. You would have to open the door to control them. The idea is I come down the stairs, I could turn on the lights then enter the theater. Once inside, I can control them with my remote. Sound reasonable?

The problem is it's a light switch with dimmer. Not sure how I can paint it. This is the one I've been eying. They're a steal on ebay. Intermatic Z-wave 6 pack is $99 shipped on ebay.

jautor, first off, I love your build! I may even need to borrow your color scheme.

I called six local electrical supply companies and none of them have it in stock. One could order it from Montana but it wouldn't be worth the money. I found it online for $83 shipped to my door for the 1.5". I may go that route. I also purchased a 22 gauge 30 ft. Monoprice HDMI cable. That and the four runs of Cat6 are going to the projector. I have so much Cat6 it's not even funny so throwing those up there won't hurt me one bit.

My brother in-law, who's an AutoCAD machine, drew out my room and we figured out the best way to lay out the sconces as well as the panels. I want no in-wall speakers showing, as well as the breaker box (middle of right wall), so it took some time but we got it figured out. It's going to look great! I got bored and threw something together in 3DSMax to illustrate:



Also, I think I found the projector mount I'm going with. It's from VisualApex. It's their AV-817U. I can't find anything negative about it but wanted to run it by you guys before I pull the trigger.

http://www.visualapex.com/accessorie...number=AV-817U

Thanks for the replies. The sconces will have two different zones. They are placed roughly 5.5' and 11' back from the screen wall, cutting the room into three areas with a sconce in the middle of each. The front ones will rarely get used and the rears will probably be a low dim when the kids watch movies. I can't stand lights on when I'm watching.

I got sidetracked for a few days due to the holiday weekend and my water well going ape on me. I have a band-aid on it now but I believe either the bladder in my well tank is bad (keep losing a psi or 2 a day until it hits mid 20's) or the pressure switch is messed up. Waaay too much info to get into on this forum but I know a plumber familiar with this stuff that will look at it soon.

The playroom/office on the right obviously needs prepped for drywall concomitantly so I have been working on that the last two days. This room will tie into the whole house audio system with a single, dual voice coil 8" ceiling speaker. I'm building a backer box for it and had a question. I'm using 19/32 OSB and have the first layer done. I am going to do a Green Glue layer with another layer of OSB. It's not cement board but it will do the job well enough, I'm sure. I know for cement board they recommend using screws (good luck with nails) but for this OSB I used 1" 18 gauge staples with glue to make the box. I'm thinking of using the staples again to hold the next layer together. Just making sure I don't have to use screws for Green Glue. I wouldn't think so, but I'm pretty green (get it) at this.

Thanks.

Jeff, the room is very small. The stairs kind of kill it so without taking the end of the stairs into consideration it's only really an 8.5 x 14 room. In the ceiling are four 6" Halo can lights. I'm going to put the in-ceiling speaker in the center of the can lights, making an "x". There's also a soffit in there.

I'd use screws but I don't have any that won't go through the outer box. The 2 layers of OSB are 1 3/16" and the smallest screws I have here are 2".

jautor, I took your advice and will be installing a stereo pair of speakers. Heck, I have 3 extra sets of stereo in-ceilings I got from a buyout from Parts Express so that will actually save me some money. Now I'm just trying to decide if they will look better in a grid with the can lights or in a Y formation like you suggested. I used almost a whole tube of GG for both boxes. Internal dimensions are 12.5 x 12.5 x 6 = 0.54 ft3. Should be plenty for the 6.5" speakers. I love posting pics so here's the boxes being built.



My brother in-law and myself got a ton of work done these last two days. If we keep it up I think drywall will begin Monday or Tuesday. I know a guy that has been drywalling for over 35 years that will be doing the work, that gave me a great price. It helps to know people! Two buds of his will help him hang and he will mud the remaining. It should be complete by the weekend. With any luck I'll have the walls primed and painted, doors hung, and trim installed the next week.

My question is before the carpet goes in do I only need to have my screen wall treated 2x4 footer screwed in so the carpet can be laid up to it? I'm thinking of having them charge me for an extra foot of depth and keeping that as a remnant so if anyone ever decides to rip out the screen wall they can have someone splice in the small section of carpet with the old. Good idea? Also, I will have all the trim installed (was told 3/8" up for carpet) except for the pieces that will run into the screen wall. I will do those after the panels are built and installed. Thanks again to everyone. This forum is invaluable. I can't imagine trying to build something like this without the wealth this forum provides.