The Black Banshee Home Theater and Gaming Lair Thread!!

Pics of the completed room!







Includes a motorized center lifting console for two LCDs that are used for multiplayer gaming. Closed:



Open:



Equipment Room:



Rec. Room:




Home-Built MAME Console (7000 games, Arcade, Nintendo, Pinball, Many More):




Final acoustic treatments:
Isomax clips for drywall attachment
Stagger stud walls
Double 5/8” drywall with Green Glue
Sand filled stage
Corner Bass traps
Insulated soffits around perimeter of ceiling
Linacoustic on walls up to ear level

Current Equipment List:
Panasonic PT-AE7000U 3D Projector
Monster Vision 3D glasses
144” wide acoustically transparent custom screen with SMX material
Lutron 6 zone Grafik Eye
Klipsch RF-83 Front Speakers
Klipsch RC-64 Center Speaker
Klipsch RS-62 Side Speakers
Klipsch RS-62 Rear Speakers
Klipsch RT-12D Sub
DENON 2112CI Receiver/Amp
Custom 20TB HTPC using MyMovies 4 and TMT5 for Blu-Ray ISO playback
Xbox 360
PS3



ORIGINAL POST:
I’ve been lurking on AVS for a year and a half, reading and learning, and am in the planning stages of my dream home theater! My new home is currently under construction (late April finish date) and it has a large basement that I will be finishing with a billiards room, lounge area, home gym, and of course the home theater. Preliminary layout below (after about 15 different iterations):



The home theater room dimensions are about 13 ft 3 in wide, 27 ft 9 in long (length is negotiable), and 8 ft ceilings. I plan to do most of the work myself, at least the framing and electrical (I’m lucky enough to have a dad who is a master electrician and also a state electrical inspector).

Preliminary acoustic treatments:
• RSIC clips for the attachment of stud walls to the concrete sides
• Stagger studs on the walls adjoining other rooms
• Double 5/8” drywall with Green Glue on all walls and the ceiling
• Fabric Frame Walls with Linacoustic up to ear level and at the speaker first reflection points
• Acoustimat and Carpet on the floor
• Sand-filled stage
• Corner Bass traps
• Insulated Soffits around perimeter of ceiling

Preliminary Equipment List:
• Acoustically transparent screen (probably SMX material), 2.35:1 Constant Image Height, 12 ft wide
• 1080p projector (TBD model)
• Anamorphic lens for 2.35:1 horizontal stretch (TBD model)
• DVDO VP50 Video Processor
• Klipsch THX Ultra 2, 7.1 speaker system (includes two subs and the sub amp)
• Pre-Amp (model TBD, looking for suggestions)
• Crown Xti Amps
• 8 Berkline seats with power recline, 2 rows of 4. Second row on an 18” riser.
• HTPC (details in work, but must be capable of 1080p processing)
• Terabyte server for all DVDs (server details in work)
• Cinemar software and touchscreen mobile PC for control of all equipment
• Lutron lighting control system
• Xbox 360
• Nintendo Wii
• Playstation 3
• 1080p HD-DVD player (model TBD)

Here is a render of the room from just behind the second row:



Here’s a picture of the actual basement from about the same spot:



Here’s another render looking from the screen position:



Now in case you didn’t notice from my equipment list (or the title of my thread), I also intend to make this room a dedicated gaming room, particularly for on-line multiplayer gaming like Xbox Live games (PS3 and Nintendo are still catching up to Microsoft, but they’ll get there). I love to have friends come over and we all hook up our systems to separate monitors for some late-night gaming. So to obtain this feature for the room, I’m planning on building a custom gaming cabinet between the two rows of seats. Below is a slightly better view of the theater from above showing the gaming cabinet:



Now the cool part – when I want to play games with buddies, I plan to place two 32” LCD’s in the cabinet that will have motorized lifts. Each screen will have its own dedicated Xbox 360, so with someone playing on the main projector and one person on each monitor, then 3 people can play together on-line:



The cabinet can also be used for storing equipment, or when the LCD screens are retracted, you can simply place appetizers on it for Superbowl Sunday!

If the room looks a little like Sandman’s, it’s no coincidence. I’ve always loved his design and am a big fan of the dark red and black color scheme. Haven’t decided on the type or color of wood accent but it will probably be something close to the design pictures.

I have many questions on my room design, but to keep from overwhelming everyone I’ll start with two related questions:

1) My current seating distance for the front row is about 13 ft 6 in. For a 2.35:1 movie on my 12 ft wide screen, that’s a 47 deg viewing angle. For a 1.78:1 movie, that’s a 36 deg wide viewing angle. This sitting distance meets the THX recommended range for both aspect ratios per the calculator at http://www.carltonbale.com/home-thea...er-calculator/. I plan to have a 1080p projector, but most source material will be DVD (at least until the HD format war is finished) and 720p video games. Need opinions if this is too close?

2) How are the room dimensions for acoustics? The various online calculators say that a room with my width of 13 ft 3 inches shouldn’t be longer than 22 feet or so for optimal acoustics, but I can’t fit both rows of seats plus the gaming cabinet within this length. The minimum comfortable length that will fit all the furniture is about 26 feet long, but that’s too close to 2X the width, so I increased it to the 27 feet 8 inches you see in the layout. What are the disadvantages of this room length if any?

Thanks to all the amazing folks on this forum! There are so many experts and resources here I feel truly humbled. I plan to post all my future progress for feedback and reference.

Any other comments/suggestions are welcome!

-Lance

Thanks! The hard part will be waiting until May to get started.

I've seen several ideas on AVS for covering windows. I've got three windows to cover, right now I'm thinking I'll cover them in plywood, then build the stud wall over the plywood (but I won't directly attach the stud wall to the plywood). I'll paint the back of the plywood black so it looks like a dark room from outside the house.

I'm in Littleton ScottJ - how about you? Do you have a theater in work?

Thanks - I agree it will be tight. I'll do layouts in the actual room before I commit. I really want 8 seats in the room though.

Definitely not white, just looks that way in the render. Will be black or dark grey. Might do a star ceiling eventually.

I found a decent priced LCD lift at www.coolwoodworkingstuff.com that is less expensive than the others, about $600. I think you can get these on Ebay too. I'm probably a good year away though from looking into the LCD lifts. Maybe there will be something better by then.

Need some advice guys,

I finally have my house and we have settled in. I am ready to start my basement and HT, so I'm starting to fill out the permit forms. I'm doing my drawing, but I can't put down the width dimension of my theater until I get some help with the following:

I want to maximize the width of my theater. I have a garden level home, so the cement wall only comes up half-way the left side of my HT as shown:



What I'd like to do is attach my 2 layer drywall directly to the concrete on the lower half of the wall, isolated only with sound isolation channel or furring strips. Then I'll add framing members to the top half of the wall as required to provide an even mounting surface for the drywall. I don't want to put a full thickness frame wall on the lower half so I can maximize my room width.

My question is, do you think this will meet code, or do I have to build a complete perimeter frame wall? I've been trying to get hold of my county office and get an answer, so far no luck.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm aware of the expansive soil problem. Luckily my lot soil report has a "low" soil expansion rating. However, to be safe I am taking the proper precautions with the floating joints at the bottom. This was one of my questions a while back on this forum, and Dennis Erskine suggest I use "MLV" or vinyl sheet at the bottom of the floating wall to simultaneously allow for movement and to seal it acoustically.

Thanks for the 2x2 suggestion, that sounds like a good possibility. I'm finishing up my plans and will be headed to the county office next week.

I've also started making a mockup in my future theater room to set my future seat positions and screen size. Here's my redneck theater!



I was a bit nervous about the screen size (12' wide, 2.35:1 ratio), but after much reading here I think it will work great with my 14' seating distance. As a sanity check I determined the equivalent distance I'd need to sit from my 52" LCD to get the same field of view (about 4.5 feet away) and watched a 2.35:1 movie. It was just right for the total viewing angle I usually like at the movie theater. I also forced my wife to sit in the seat, she had no idea what I was doing, but agreed the movie looked OK at that distance.

Now I just want to start work!

Regarding the windows - code here says I only need egress windows for bedrooms or "rooms where people will sleep". So, I'm hoping I won't have any problems boarding up the windows. I will at least paint the outside surface of the close-out with black paint so it just looks like a dark basement.

Has anyone had problems with egress window requirements in their theaters?

Need some acoustic advice...

I'm chalk-lining my basement floor, and am stuck on my HT room dimensions. My room width is currently measuring at 13'-8". This dimension is firm.

Due to the rear wall layout around an existing sewer pipe, my theater length right now is at 28'-0".

I know you're not supposed to make your room width versus height even multiples of each other. I'm pretty close to a factor of two, but not exactly. I couldn't find a clear answer in the acoustics thread. Does anyone know how close you can be on this ratio without seeing detrimental acoustic affects? I'll move the sewer pipe or hide it in a column or bass trap if necessary, but I'm not sure if I should currently be worried.

thanks

Thanks Soundood - will look into the sealant. I can say that because of the expansive soils here, the homes are designed to carefully route all water away from the foundation, so I'm not sure how important sealing is on the concrete. I'm not aware of other HT owners in Colorado doing it, but I could be wrong.

As for the windows, I'll see what the permit folks say - my plan clearly showed I was boarding them up. I expect my permit any day.

My progress this week - had the HVAC folks come out, they are working up my quote. Specifically told them I want to run all my HT HVAC lines in the soffit, and to use flex-duct with multiple turns.

Am awaiting my permit any day.

Also had the lumber delivered this week, boy was that a chore getting it in the basement. It helped having a garden level basement so I can feed the lumber through the window. The wife actually helped me for about 30 minutes on the lumber move before saying I was crazy!

More to come...