[pgwalsh]

Gold Camp Theater Build

Hi all,

After a long long journey I completed my theater. The build thread wasn’t a follow along because there were many obstacles to overcome in my personal life (father & sister passing and 2 children being born) which took me away for months at a time.

A great number of AVSers helped and guided me along the way and without there help I could have never completed the theater. I am very grateful to you all and a huge thank you to BIGmouthinDC, , LTD02, Mike Garrett, Ted White, John Hile, Chris Seymour, Silva741, Ryan Hendry, Jon_B, Cksqurd, SteveFred, Naveen G, TMcG, Jonas2, granroth and pretty much everyone in the Dedicated Theater Design & Construction forum.

I will post build progress picture below over the next few days or weeks. All in all it was an amazing experience to build a theater from the ground up. I learned a massive amount during the process and even did my first framing job. One of the things I really love about AVSForum is that even though you can always start a new thread and post a question the answer in many cases is already buried in a thread. Reading other people's build threads was invaluable and I stole so many awesome ideas from all of you. Things like using harbor freight vertical clamps to put up backer boxes or calling Magna Fabrics to buy in bulk and building frames for fabric panels and attaching them with velcro.

Entry to the theater or The Lobby:

Spoiler

The only issue now is that during the build my wife and I decided that we wanted to be near family since we have a newborn on the way and a 2 1/2 year old. In order to do that, we had to move. So about 5 months after I built the theater we moved to New Zealand. We love our new home, but miss our theater so.....

 

[dlechner]

Sweet! I am in the Springs as well. Look forward to seeing your progress! Maybe will have to have a COS home theater GTG!!!

 

[Silva741]

I think you should rotate the layout 90, or 180 degrees. With 180 degrees you’d have many advantages. Easy to place the side speakers exactly where desired, the riser would be in the optimal place, and the persons would enter and see the screen immediately, without obstacles.

Closing the entryway or not, you’d get better acoustic results by closing it, but I think it’d look cool either way.

 

[BIGmouthinDC]

+1 rotate, now with this new plan you could narrow the entrance with a partial wall and create a space along the wall just opposite the door for either your equipment or refreshment counter. Maybe both.

 

[pgwalsh]

I think you should rotate the layout 90, or 180 degrees. With 180 degrees you’d have many advantages. Easy to place the side speakers exactly where desired, the riser would be in the optimal place, and the persons would enter and see the screen immediately, without obstacles.

Closing the entryway or not, you’d get better acoustic results by closing it, but I think it’d look cool either way.

I like it. I like it a lot.

+1 rotate, now with this new plan you could narrow the entrance with a partial wall and create a space along the wall just opposite the door for either your equipment or refreshment counter. Maybe both.

This is a good idea. I had planned to put the equipment in the CLOSET space. If I change the angle of the 2 x 6, then I have more than enough space for a 19" rack. On the other side of the closet, where I had the screen originally, is my media room and bar. I planned to put another rack on that side with my NAS servers etc. I was going to put a ventilation system above and route it into my boiler room which has double ventilation. In that section the ceiling is much higher, but beams have been put in.

How many seats do you think I can get in that space without being overly crowded? I'd like two rows and thought about putting love seat chases on the first, but I don't have my heart set on anything. A curved seating area would be nice too, what do you think?

 

[pgwalsh]

Sweet! I am in the Springs as well. Look forward to seeing your progress! Maybe will have to have a COS home theater GTG!!!

There's another member in the springs who's also into DIY speakers. We've been talking about meeting up at some point.

 

[pgwalsh]

Does anyone have any links or companies they recommend for good high end theater seating?

 

[pgwalsh]

Closing the entryway or not, you’d get better acoustic results by closing it, but I think it’d look cool either way.

I thought about closing it off, but then I'd have this odd little room between that outer and inner door. I imagine it would help with soundproofing that outer area, which is a big deal. I could take pictures of the room and the entry. I'm open to any suggestions.

 

[Cksqurd]

Does anyone have any links or companies they recommend for good high end theater seating?

I got mine from theaterseatstore.com. They may have something you like. I called and got better pricing and free install.

 

[Silva741]

How many seats do you think I can get in that space without being overly crowded? I'd like two rows and thought about putting love seat chases on the first, but I don't have my heart set on anything. A curved seating area would be nice too, what do you think?

The seats I placed on the image above are Palliser's Lemans, not exactly small, and they're modeled accurately, I think you can easily fit 5 seats. A curved seating takes more space, 4 would surely fit, 5 may or not.

 

[pgwalsh]

The seats I placed on the image above are Palliser's Lemans, not exactly small, and they're modeled accurately, I think you can easily fit 5 seats. A curved seating takes more space, 4 would surely fit, 5 may or not.

Thanks... I'm on their site now. I think I'd like to do at least 5 in the back and 4 in the front. I'm trying to get an idea on seats so I know where to build the columns beforehand. I'm going to do a set of side channels for each row.

I've looked at fortresseating.com and they also have some nice seating. I am looking for the dark brown and black combo with perhaps some wood accents.

 

[LTD02]

placing the subs at 1/4 distances from the top/bottom/side walls will eliminate/not excite most of the room modes. ideally the drivers would be located at the intersections of the red dotted lines. but, getting close still provides most of the benefit.

there will still be one off the rear wall. with a limp mass that may be partially absorbed and/or eq can be used because frequency response should be fairly uniform across the rows (though I'm not sure how that "nook" throws it all off.


I don't follow in the area, so pm to me if something isn't clear.


this thread is a must read:


http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-diy-speakers-subs/1506201-ltd-m18-sub-build.html


;-) good luck.

 

[pgwalsh]

placing the subs at 1/4 distances from the top/bottom/side walls will eliminate/not excite most of the room modes. ideally the drivers would be located at the intersections of the red dotted lines. but, getting close still provides most of the benefit.

there will still be one off the rear wall. with a limp mass that may be partially absorbed and/or eq can be used because frequency response should be fairly uniform across the rows (though I'm not sure how that "nook" throws it all off.


I don't follow in the area, so pm to me if something isn't clear.


this thread is a must read:


http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-diy-speakers-subs/1506201-ltd-m18-sub-build.html


;-) good luck.

Thanks John. I may put in a wall where that nook is because I want to make the room fairly sound proof, or as much as I can. The double door are solid, but not solid enough.

How would you fire the ports on this one? Same as Jbrown? For the size his boxes are very shallow, which is nice.

 

[pgwalsh]

Getting closer to starting the build.

First, thank you everyone for your suggestions, I think I'm going to use all of them. I've been away for the last 6 weeks (that's my wife's home country) in NZ and I'm back and ready to get this thing going. After taking into consideration of flipping the room and seating, I am convinced that's the right way to go. While poking around in that room, I came up with a few things that might make things more interesting.

I measured the cross beams and they're 14" deep. However, the back of the room where the riser and second row of seats will reside there's an extended ceiling or should I say false ceiling. Taking this out would give me 14" of added height in the rear for the riser and ATMOS speakers. It's just 2x4's with come vertical boards attached, nothing fancy. See pics below.

This picture may be hard to discern at first, but you'll see the upper beams where the wire's are and then the false ceiling 2x4's below.

This next image show's the other area's without the false ceiling (I don't know if that's what you'd call it).

The next section is where there's some dead space I was going to use for the equipment. The space is a bit tight to put a rack in, so I was planning on moving, the non-supporting, wall 6 inches into the room. I loose a little space on the sides, but not much and that enables me to double sheetrock on both sides.

Where the thermostat and light switch are located is where I plan to put the rack. It won't be facing into the room.

With that said, I plan to put in a wall and interior door for sound proofing. So this wall that I plan to bring out 6 inches will extend the whole length of that room. Here's what the space looks like currently.

Lastly, is this what they call a decoupled wall?

I plan to remove some, if not all, of the insulation to use Roxul stone wool insulation. I've heard it's better for soundproofing etc. I'll post the other sound proofing measures I plan to take sometime this week. Soundproofing is important. Our house is steel frame and vibrations tend to travel further than expected. This never happened in another steel framed house we owned, so I'm a bit perplexed.

I know I've said a lot in this post, but I really would appreciate some constructive feedback. Any suggestions are welcome.

Pete

 

[Jon_B]

I'm excited to see your build. I loved how your td12m speakers turned out, I'm sure you'll be able to bring that kind of detail to your theater.

Don't spend too much money on the roxul insulation. Remember the four elements of soundproofing; http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/soundproofing101/4-elements-of-soundproofing-for-construction/

 

[pgwalsh]

I'm excited to see your build. I loved how your td12m speakers turned out, I'm sure you'll be able to bring that kind of detail to your theater.

Don't spend too much money on the roxul insulation. Remember the four elements of soundproofing; http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/soundproofing101/4-elements-of-soundproofing-for-construction/

Jon,

Thanks for the compliment on the td12m/seos design, that is very kind of you.

Right now I'm just trying to get all my ducks in a row before I dive in. Thanks for the link, I'll read more of it today.

 

[pgwalsh]

Design Update 1

Here's the plan updated with new wall and door. I was hoping some of you could critique the plan and tell me where I may be going wrong with seating etc. I have no idea how to accomplish Atmos with 2 rows of seats, so any advice on that issue is welcome.

As mentioned above, I can raise the 8'6" ceiling above the second row, where the riser starts, 14 inches. I'll still have another 14" of support beams. I didn't save myself a ton of room between the back row and wall, but I have been trying to give my front row as much distance from the screen as possible. I wonder if I'm cutting it too close.

 

[Jon_B]

Awesome width in your room. I'm jealous of that. Big disclaimer, I am no way shape or form an expert. Also, I know zip about atmos. With that said, the rows of seats look awfully close to each other. Also the back row looks a little close to the back wall. I do like the orientation you have the theater in now. I also like where the entrance sits to the theater. Having extra ceiling height for the ceiling is awesome.

 

[BIGmouthinDC]

I like the basic flow of the room but the speaker placement just doesn't look quite right, check the Dolby labs white papers

 

[Ryan Hendry]

I second BIG's observation. Seems like the ATMOS heights should be brought in a few feet.

But great looking space to work with! Your "decoupled" wall is likely building code. Up further north, they likely require your basement walls to float, leaving a 3/4"-1" gap so when frost heaves your basement floor, it has room to not push up on the floor joists above.