I'm getting close to maybe, perhaps, possibly finishing my basement and turning into a theater/game room and I'm just looking for some feedback, including things I may not have even considered. I also have a few questions at the end.
Attached you'll see a rough floorplan. I'm looking at having two rows of seating, probably only 3 chairs per row, and then a bar behind that. The distances to the screen are rough estimates. The second row of seating will be on a riser, probably between 9 and 12 inches. The back of the room (on the right) will be a gaming area of sorts - at first it'll be nearly empty, but over time I'd like a Super Chexx, a pinball machine, etc.
My plan is to use DD/GG/clips/channel on the ceiling and the green walls. Ted from SoundProofCompany said I don't need DD/GG on the foundation walls, as long as I use IB-3 clips so that's the plan there. I'll have window plugs made for both of the egress windows so that I can remove them when I need to but leave them in most of the time.
The closet in the lower-left side is where the equipment will go.
There will be another wall (not shown) that separates the stairway landing from the mechanical room (where "HW" is). There will also be a door leading under the stairs as a wiring closet for the house. I'm a little concerned that there's going to be 4 doors in that foyer, but don't see any other options. (I wanted to build a secret passage to get to the mechanical room, but I was told that's against code to "hide" the mechanics. /sigh ).
The acoustically transparent wall will be roughly 3' from the foundation wall as shown on the left. I don't have a lot of details on what I'm doing there yet, but I've been reading Big's minimalistic thread and it's full of good ideas.
There will be Drycore on the floor, as well as carpet. A projector is in the plans (I have the Epson 7500UB, and will probably keep that to start), so I'll probably put a layer of OSB in the ceiling so I can change out the pj if I need to in the future.
The HVAC guy suggested a ductless minisplit be installed on the far right wall and that it would keep the room cool and avoid noise traveling through the ducts to the rest of the house. Living in Minnesota, we have lots of extreme temperatures (100F in summer, -20F in winter), but the model he's recommending works down to, if I recall, 0F I think? I'm waiting for him to send the details, including the model.
My questions:
Regarding the minisplit in general, is this a good idea? Also, do I need any sort of ducts in the room to bring new air in? The HVAC guy says it's not needed, but I'm not 100% convinced. In addition, there's really not many other areas to pull fresh air from -- the mechnical room has fresh air from the outside, so I could do something under the stairs I suppose. Or maybe pull from bathroom, but that seems like it'll defeat some of the purpose of sound proofing, so.... Not sure what to do.
The other question I have is how to build a soffit around the existing ductwork. There's a main trunk just above where the staircase is on the diagram -- roughly from the green wall to the "~12' " line. I understand the idea of building a soffit inside of your framed room for best sound containment, but how do you do clips/channel on the ceiling when the trunk is in the way? Do you pull the whole thing down, put up the clips/channel/DD/GG, and then put the HVAC trunk back together? Can I do clips/channel/DD/GG on a soffit instead? I'm not sure how that works...
Regarding speakers -- I'll probably install Atmos speakers during the build (even though I don't have an AVR that supports it yet...), and will build backer boxes around whatever ones I find. If I go with a 5.1.4 setup, the height speakers would go slightly in front of the first row, and then slightly behind the back row?
As for the surround speakers -- I'm not sure where exactly to put them. I currently have Paradigm Studio 20v3 as my surrounds from my previous theater, but I don't know if I can fit that big of a speaker in this room since the surround would be in the walkway. Maybe I could embed it in the wall somehow, but I don't know that the Studio 20 is a good choice for two rows of seating anyway, so maybe I need to look into dipole speakers? Looking for suggestions so I know how to pre-wire. Any ideas on how I would do 7.1.4 instead would be welcome as well -- especially if I get dipole speakers for the sides and could use the Studio 20s as the rears, but I'm not sure where they would go with this floorplan.
This is a bit longer than I expected, but I appreciate any advice anyone can give me as I continue reading through the various threads (especially the "what would I do differently" thread!
).
Thanks for any assistance/suggestions.
Attached you'll see a rough floorplan. I'm looking at having two rows of seating, probably only 3 chairs per row, and then a bar behind that. The distances to the screen are rough estimates. The second row of seating will be on a riser, probably between 9 and 12 inches. The back of the room (on the right) will be a gaming area of sorts - at first it'll be nearly empty, but over time I'd like a Super Chexx, a pinball machine, etc.
My plan is to use DD/GG/clips/channel on the ceiling and the green walls. Ted from SoundProofCompany said I don't need DD/GG on the foundation walls, as long as I use IB-3 clips so that's the plan there. I'll have window plugs made for both of the egress windows so that I can remove them when I need to but leave them in most of the time.
The closet in the lower-left side is where the equipment will go.
There will be another wall (not shown) that separates the stairway landing from the mechanical room (where "HW" is). There will also be a door leading under the stairs as a wiring closet for the house. I'm a little concerned that there's going to be 4 doors in that foyer, but don't see any other options. (I wanted to build a secret passage to get to the mechanical room, but I was told that's against code to "hide" the mechanics. /sigh ).
The acoustically transparent wall will be roughly 3' from the foundation wall as shown on the left. I don't have a lot of details on what I'm doing there yet, but I've been reading Big's minimalistic thread and it's full of good ideas.
There will be Drycore on the floor, as well as carpet. A projector is in the plans (I have the Epson 7500UB, and will probably keep that to start), so I'll probably put a layer of OSB in the ceiling so I can change out the pj if I need to in the future.
The HVAC guy suggested a ductless minisplit be installed on the far right wall and that it would keep the room cool and avoid noise traveling through the ducts to the rest of the house. Living in Minnesota, we have lots of extreme temperatures (100F in summer, -20F in winter), but the model he's recommending works down to, if I recall, 0F I think? I'm waiting for him to send the details, including the model.
My questions:
Regarding the minisplit in general, is this a good idea? Also, do I need any sort of ducts in the room to bring new air in? The HVAC guy says it's not needed, but I'm not 100% convinced. In addition, there's really not many other areas to pull fresh air from -- the mechnical room has fresh air from the outside, so I could do something under the stairs I suppose. Or maybe pull from bathroom, but that seems like it'll defeat some of the purpose of sound proofing, so.... Not sure what to do.
The other question I have is how to build a soffit around the existing ductwork. There's a main trunk just above where the staircase is on the diagram -- roughly from the green wall to the "~12' " line. I understand the idea of building a soffit inside of your framed room for best sound containment, but how do you do clips/channel on the ceiling when the trunk is in the way? Do you pull the whole thing down, put up the clips/channel/DD/GG, and then put the HVAC trunk back together? Can I do clips/channel/DD/GG on a soffit instead? I'm not sure how that works...
Regarding speakers -- I'll probably install Atmos speakers during the build (even though I don't have an AVR that supports it yet...), and will build backer boxes around whatever ones I find. If I go with a 5.1.4 setup, the height speakers would go slightly in front of the first row, and then slightly behind the back row?
As for the surround speakers -- I'm not sure where exactly to put them. I currently have Paradigm Studio 20v3 as my surrounds from my previous theater, but I don't know if I can fit that big of a speaker in this room since the surround would be in the walkway. Maybe I could embed it in the wall somehow, but I don't know that the Studio 20 is a good choice for two rows of seating anyway, so maybe I need to look into dipole speakers? Looking for suggestions so I know how to pre-wire. Any ideas on how I would do 7.1.4 instead would be welcome as well -- especially if I get dipole speakers for the sides and could use the Studio 20s as the rears, but I'm not sure where they would go with this floorplan.
This is a bit longer than I expected, but I appreciate any advice anyone can give me as I continue reading through the various threads (especially the "what would I do differently" thread!
).Thanks for any assistance/suggestions.
