Please please help this wife with design ideas- see pics

Not a designer but I will show you to one of my favorite black/red theaters here on avs. It is the Bacon Race theater. I am thinking about doing something similar with my color scheme.

Here is a link to the build thread.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1350179/making-the-bacon-race-theater

You may want to peruse the "show me" threads.

Here is a link to all of the show me threads.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/978755/the-show-me-thread-all-of-the-show-me-your-threads-linked-here

You should be able to find many examples of specific things like columns or completely finished rooms there.

Guilford of Maine is a commonly used supplier of acoustically transparent fabrics if you want to go that route.

And yes, choosing black carpet was a good idea from the standpoint of light control. It may not have been necessary to do the whole room in black carpet but many choose to do at least the stage in black and the rest of the room in a dark color.


good luck

Sounds like the case of the 7 P's

There is free room planning software out there. Folks on here seem to like Google SketchUp

If you're using a projector look up projector calculator websites and screen size calculators.

If you don't know where your side/rear surrounds should go check out Dolby's website - http://www.dolby.com/us/en/consumer/setup/connection-guide/home-theater-speaker-guide/index.html

Also look at the Riser Height Calculator that is stickied at the top of this forum. It will help determine how big your screen is.

Tim

ps- 7P's.. I had to follow the link.... so true.

yup... parents were in the Navy so they threw a lot of acronyms my way growing up and still do to this day. This is one that stuck with me the most b/c of its many uses in the corp world (where I work).

You could start by visiting the "Show Me Your _____" threads. Many of them are collected here: http://www.avsforum.com/t/978755/the-show-me-thread-all-of-the-show-me-your-threads-linked-here

What kind of "design ideas" were you looking for, exactly, considering you've already "purchased all the equip."? Are you looking for decoration ideas instead?

I'm not sure that the room is suited for three rows, or even a projector and screen for that matter. I would need to see a sketch of the floor plan with dimensions. Are you planning to cover the door on the front wall with a screen? If not what is left is too small for a three row theater.

Here is red theater, did this one this summer.


Edited by BIGmouthinDC - 1/28/13 at 5:33am

Didn't mean to scare you off, but I should also point out that it is doubtful that the riser heights are correct for a screen appropriately sized for three rows. We might be able to help you save this room but more information is needed. Postpone the carpet if you can.

What Big needs are detailed dimensions of the room. A blueprint if possible. Dimensions of the furniture and a list of all of the equipment you have purchased.

You need to get proper sight lines to the screen for all rows. You want the rows to be the correct distance to the screen so that the viewing angle is right. Then you need to plan the height of the riser so that the second row can see over the first row and the front speakers can reach the second row ears.

The surround speakers then need to be placed after the rows have been set. The placement will depend on what speaker design has been chosen (dipole or direct radiating).

The more detail you can provide the better Big and others can help you.

You will also want to provide a budget and what you want that budget to include.

Is the electrical and lighting 100% finalized? Any plans for automation? Was there any soundproofing done? Ideally, one would want to include a plan to place sound treatments in various locations around the room. These would be typically 2-4'' thick and placed along several of the walls at strategic locations. There is a lot to consider. In a perfect world all of this has been thought out before the drywall goes up. Still, there are some smart people here (not me) who may be able to help you get the most out of this room.

What are your expectations for the audio/video performance of this room? I am asking because if you and your husband are not extremely particular it will simplify things greatly. As you might anticipate most of the people on this forum have extremely high standards for performance. Aesthetics are something I am just now ironing out after I have spent a few thousand hours getting the AV performance as good as I can for my budget. Of course you can have it all for enough coin.

Hi Totally Confused in Maryland,

If you haven’t done so already (and if it’s not too late/hard/$$$) you may want to consider or at least plan to network your A/V gear somehow. Your receiver is network ready and you probably have (or will in the future) a network ready blu-ray player or game console (PS3/Xbox).

Check out floorplanner.com. It's a very vanilla website to help with the floorplan. Sketchup is more advanced but it will let you do a lot with the color choices and such.

Find some other theaters you like and have at it.

You can make a really nice theater in that space.

3 rows of seating will be really tight though. Probably not realistic.

Look at the riser height calculator. You have your screen size and your room dimensions. It will tell you how high to make the risers.

On the positive side, if you built on top of the existing riser you may be able to do a helmholtz resonator, but it has to be designed by somebody who knows what they're doing. Or you can just fill with pink fluffy.

Other things of note:
-looks like double doors going into the theater. They look great, but for us theater geeks it's generally frowned upon. Hard to keep sound in, sound out and so forth. Not to say it can't be done, but it's generally not the best option. You could change to a single door at this point without too much trouble. Or you can keep the doubles, but budget for some good sound seals (search AVS for "zero threshold")
-I'm assuming one layer of drywall at this point. You could add a second layer with green glue (pretty much the standard for any theater in this forum) to improve isolation.
-has your contractor given sufficient consideration to cooling the theater? With people concentrated in there and electronics there is going to be a bigger cooling load
-looks like an equipment closet in the rear corner, has any thought been given to exhausting the heat form this space with a thermostatically controlled fan?

Tim

You've confused me. Are you still trying for three rows of seats? If you're not, you only need one riser.

One riser - two rows, and slightly larger screen would be my recommendation. Then you can move the front row back a foot or two and still feel like the screen is big, without cramping the rear.

Fred

Re-reading, maybe I made up the idea that you were going to downsize to two rows. In either case, that's what I would do. Also, did you buy an acoustically transparent screen? Your layout doesn't indicate any reason for you to have done that.

For me (and most HT builders here, I'd say), if you are going to go with a woven screen like that you should take good advantage of it. That means bringing it out from the wall a foot or two so that the front speakers, or just the center channel depending on your design and preferences, can go behind it. The dialog comes almost exclusively from the center channel, so hearing the sound come from the screen ratchets the immersion up a big notch. On the other hand, if you need a screen with higher gain or a grey screen, you may need a solid screen and be forced to forgo the benefits of proper center channel localization.

The other considerations of course include the extra construction (which is minimal) and the space requirements. Once you build out what we call a false wall, you generally give up about 2 to 2.5 feet of length on the room. Check out this thread about easy construction techniques for building a false wall. BIGmouthinDC uses fabric wrapped frames, as many do, but that's not necessary. This approach really does change the look of the room and enhances the performance at the same time. Since you've already budgeted for the AT screen and have settled on two rows, a little construction could be a very nice compliment to your design - it gets the speakers out of the way.

Fred

Edit: well that'll teach me to read carefully, won't it! You've selected in-wall speakers. Well, still consider a false wall or at least the aesthetics of it - as it does enhance the cinematic look and performance of the room.

I second the concept of being concerned about cooling. I have my second theater now. In the first, no consideration for cooling the room in the winter--the rest of the house needs heat but not that room where it gets too warm. With the second theater, the HVAC guy thought long and hard and we came up with the plan ultimately of adding a second air conditioner with a dedicated duct system. It certainly added cost, but there is no sound leakage through the ducts and the room is usable in the winter months.

BIG, which build is that? I have not seen that photo before.

Auburn08, that is summer fun in my signature,

In my 1st HT, I was sitting at 10' away from a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen, and both me & my wife think we could go with a 110" screen especially for movie 2.35:1 contents.

I would recommend:

- 110" diagonal 16:9 screen
- 2 row of 3 seats
- may be a 2' deep false wall so you could also hide the subwoofer especially since you are only doing 2 row and have lots of room depth (22')
- put the 1st row @ 10-11' from the screen (12-13' from the wall assuming you are doing a 2' false wall)
- build a 10-12" riser for the 2nd row (depends on how much head room you'll need or how tall you are)
- basically, I would "push" everything backward towards the backwall since 22' is quite a lot of depth for 2 rows.

Or

- 2 row + 3 row bar IF you really want 3 rows.
- No false wall (not a problem since your LCR is in-wall), 100' screen, 1st row at 9', 2nd row another 7' back, 3rd bar top will have 6' room which should be ok.

certainly. and with a total of 22' depth with 2 rows, I would move to rows backwards towards the backwall, and getting a bigger screen.