[brawnyman]

I am in the planning stages of a new dedicated home theater room. I have been pouring over the forums and I am confused as to why people put 1000s of lbs of sand into a stage to "decouple" speakers and subs from the floor. In alot of these installations the floor underneath the stage is concrete. My theater room will be carpeting over concrete, and I had hoped to put my speakers and subs on the floor, behind a false wall with accoustically transparent fabric, GOM or similar. Is there some reason that people couldn't put their speakers and subs directly onto carpet over concrete, using spikes etc? Is the sand in the stage strictly to reduce the chance of the stage vibrating during loud bass passages? Lastly is there any reason to actually put in a stage other then the pure aesthetics? Does the increase picture quality or affect sound quality in any way. Please help me decide if I need to include a stage in my build. Thanks for your responses!

 

[wcaughey]

this should answer your question:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=845678

 

[McCall]

The stage itself does not increase the picture quality or sound by itself. Having a false wall with treatment on the back part of the "enclosure" and your speakers in this faux space preferrably behind an Acoustically transparent screen certainly does inprove things greatly.


if you had your sub on the carpeted floor on carpet spikes , it would be alright, having it on the stage without the sand or insulation would give you a hollow drum.


You can insulate your stage and use a subdude under your sub and get a good result also without the sand.


The stage and whole Procenium area is more a Look and Feel kind of thing than anything else, it depends on the look you are going for in your theater build.


Are you concerned with decreasing sound leakage from your theater at all? If so there are a lot of other issues you need to consider besides sand in the stage or stage or no stage.

 

[brawnyman]

Thanks for the info Mcall. I am unsure how much sound leakage there will be to the rest of the house. I am in the process of buying this house, and the previous owner used this room to practice with a band, the realtor told me that the room was "soundproof", however I do not know what type of treatments were used on the room. I am guessing that there is insulation in walls of the room and not much more than that. It is just me and the wife in the house, so I am not horribly concerned with sound leaking to the rest of the house. I am more concerned with getting the room to sound good for both home theater and music. Once I close escrow on the house and get moved in I will be starting a thread with pictures and more information such as dimensions to get some advice on sound treatments.

 

[McCall]

As to the sound treatments for acoustics within the room that is going to depend a great deal on what you put in it as to screen type and placement of speakers and if you use a stage, if you use a riser, Type of furnishings the shape and size of the room of course matter a great deal but not the ony thing. your treatment is more what you do once you have the room itself figured out and much of it built. Only then can you determine what acoustic problems you may have to solve. certainly there are some basic things that you will see if you read on the dedicated theater section here.