[Scott27]

We've just successfully purchased a new (old) home around the corner from our little 3 bedroom home of 10 years. We plan to knock down the old structure and with the help of an architect build a modern home that will cater for our young family of 5 as it grows. I had grand plans of a separate dedicated home theatre room however my wife has sternly poo poo'd it. As I thought divorce would be an over reaction im consigned to the fact that I need a different solution. The compromise is we will stay married and I will be allowed to turn an unsuspecting lounge/TV room into an impressive dual purpose home theatre/lounge area. The things i'm going to miss out on are dedicated seating, avoiding light coming in during the day (I will not often use it during the day anyway), and I may have to resort to a 60" LCD screen instead of say 130" projected image Sound isolation will be needed as I need t o make sure I can use it without waking the kids and wife at night time, although im not sure yet what the complications will be as we are only starting the design phase for the house.

My plan is to house the subs in custom joinery, along with all speakers so that nothing can be seen. I'd be happy to spend around $15,000 (Aussie dollars) for the 5 channels of speakers, and probably then looking at dual sealed subs (would need to be less than $8,000 for both). Suggestions would be great in regard to what speakers you would buy.

 

[BIGmouthinDC]

Familiar story, Man dreams of buying/building a home with a dedicated mancave theater. Wife says you can have a nice TV somewhere but if you want to watch it at night you better have some headphones.

Man says if you are thinking about a dream kitchen, I'll set up a camp stove on a picnic table out back and we'll call it even.

 

[drunkpenguin]

I wonder why so many women are against home theaters? My wife loves ours! She brags about it. She's gone to coworkers houses to look at their "so called" home theaters and came home praising me for building a real one. Guess I'm just lucky that my woman doesn't stand in the way of my dreams. I mean you got 3 kids I'm guessing. They would enjoy the hell out of a theater. Amazing that your wife wants to stop all that. We're not that far away from commercial theaters being a thing of the past. Some of us will be disappointed, some of us won't even notice.

Anyways, congrats on the new house! It is an exciting time. Built my house about 10 years ago and I loved every moment of it!

 

[BllDo]

I'd recommend you check out Triad speakers. They have models that will be happy to hide in cabinets (not all models will.) You might check out the Triad Owner’s Thread for some recommendations or ping @Dawn Gordon for some ideas.
For subs, I'd build some. Subs are easy to build and you will get a lot more for your money that way. Depending on what size you are looking for the DIY Sound Group has some very good flat pack sub boxes that you just have to glue together.

 

[damelon]

Another thing you can do is to do a theater in a room used for something else, say the family room. Put up decent but not large speakers, which can either be in wall, or even in cabinet. Add remote control light-blocking blinds and an electric retractable screen. Sure you don't get the sound proofing or treatments, but it doesn't make it a dedicated room and you can still get some of the "feel" of a movie theater. Big screen is so important for that. Since it is retractable, people would look in your room when it isn't deployed and might never even notice it is there.

 

[BIGmouthinDC]

An experienced capable Architect (finding one is the problem) should be able to design a dual purpose room that after dark a recessed screen comes down and the concealed projector fires up for the real theater experience. As Damelon on others have said speakers can be inwall.

 

[schmidtwi]

If you have a $23K budget for speakers, you should definitely hire a professional HT design company. Great speakers in a bad room will not yield optimal results.

Good luck.

 

[NickTheGreat]

I wonder why so many women are against home theaters? My wife loves ours! She brags about it. She's gone to coworkers houses to look at their "so called" home theaters and came home praising me for building a real one. Guess I'm just lucky that my woman doesn't stand in the way of my dreams. I mean you got 3 kids I'm guessing. They would enjoy the hell out of a theater. Amazing that your wife wants to stop all that. We're not that far away from commercial theaters being a thing of the past. Some of us will be disappointed, some of us won't even notice.

Anyways, congrats on the new house! It is an exciting time. Built my house about 10 years ago and I loved every moment of it!

Yeah . . . sometimes I think my wife thinks the theater was HER idea!

 

[philmike21]

We've just successfully purchased a new (old) home around the corner from our little 3 bedroom home of 10 years. We plan to knock down the old structure and with the help of an architect build a modern home that will cater for our young family of 5 as it grows. I had grand plans of a separate dedicated home theatre room however my wife has sternly poo poo'd it. As I thought divorce would be an over reaction im consigned to the fact that I need a different solution. The compromise is we will stay married and I will be allowed to turn an unsuspecting lounge/TV room into an impressive dual purpose home theatre/lounge area. The things i'm going to miss out on are dedicated seating, avoiding light coming in during the day (I will not often use it during the day anyway), and I may have to resort to a 60" LCD screen instead of say 130" projected image Sound isolation will be needed as I need t o make sure I can use it without waking the kids and wife at night time, although im not sure yet what the complications will be as we are only starting the design phase for the house.

My plan is to house the subs in custom joinery, along with all speakers so that nothing can be seen. I'd be happy to spend around $15,000 (Aussie dollars) for the 5 channels of speakers, and probably then looking at dual sealed subs (would need to be less than $8,000 for both). Suggestions would be great in regard to what speakers you would buy.

One of the smartest things to do would be build a garage separate from the house. Have like a hallway that goes to the garage that is enclosed obviously. Put your home theater aka man cave above the garage. This way your not actually distracting anybody in the house if you turn it up and actually enjoy the room. No point in having a nice theater room if you cant turn it up and crank it lol. Plus if you have any guy friends over your not a disturbance. Little things like that you have to put thought into when building a new house. Just a smart suggestion as to what I would do to thoroughly enjoying your man cave.

 

[Scott27]

So things have started to move! The old home has been knocked over and the new one has commenced. Polished concrete floor goes in this week, then the structural steel frame. Nyal from Acoustic Frontiers has designed the new theatre space and my builder seems on board with making it happen! Getting the sound isolation I need/want is going to be challenging as I have to have an operable window in the room (planning requirement in Australia), so its going to be a weak link!