Need advice for dedicated home theater room.

M

Mat-

Audiophyte
Hi!
I am currently in the process of getting a new house built and having the chance of building a dedicated home theater space.
I would like to have your input and suggestion on the layout and things i might have missed, since this is really my first dedicated room for my
home theater.

Here a picture of the plan so far, plz keep in mind that the size of the objects in the room are not to scale, but mostly use to give a general idea for the position of everything.
Also, I want to keep this project fairly simple in term of design, my goal is not to replicate the look of a home theater by having structural or light design for cosmetic purposes.
I really want this room to be optimized for video and sound quality.

HomeTheater_01.jpg


My equipment:

Video:
-LG OLED C8 65'' (Thinking of going with a projector, more on this later)


Audio:
7.2.4
-Mains L and R: Paradigm monitor 11 v6
-Centers: Paradigm CC-290 v6
-Surrounds: SVS prime bookshelf
-Surround back: SVS prime bookshelf
-Atmos (4x) : RSL C34E
-Subwoofer (2x): SVS PB-2000 pro

Other:
-Denon 6400h
-Minidsp 2x4 hd
-AC Infinity T8
-Sony UBP 700 4k player
-Harmony remote
-PS5
-Nintendo Switch

The room:

16'X13'X8' (1664 ft3)
Will be painted mostly with dark and matte paint.
I have a small space in the next room for my future AV rack (dont have one yet).
The walls and ceilings are going to be sound proof.
Walls are going to be staggered walls, mineral wool, sonopan panels, resilient channel, 5/8 gypse. (I was thinking of doubling the gypse and adding greenglue in between but not sure if its overkill)


Upgrade and questions

Video:

Currently i have a 65'' Oled tv which is not what you see in your typical dedicated home theater, however i am a big fan of OLED for the picture quality and a bit affraid to lose a lot of it by going with a projectors.
I know there are many great projectors with great picture quality but i dont have the budget to get one of these that could come close to a oled tv in term of picture quality.
However i am slowly getting more and more interested of getting a projector and a much bigger picture, so I plan to add the wires for it, just in case.
Budget for future projectors 3k , maybe 5k if there is a huge difference.

Audio:
Probably going to add a 3ch amplifier to the system to power the left, right and center speakers. (Monolith 3x 200w)

Sound treatment:

I have already some DIY sound absorbing panels 6X (2'x4') for sound treatment of the first reflection points, I might add some sound diffuser panel also and maybe a skyline diffuser in the back that i could DIY.
I was wondering if i should add any absorbing pannel behind the Left and Right towers even if they are 1 foot off the wall?
(I am no expert in term of sound treatment, i am just using the information i gathered along the years of research)

For the floor, since the room is in the basement, normally i would get laminate flooring with a big carpet under and in front of the sofa. However i was thinking of going with carpet only, some kind of cushion carpet.
Dont know if going carpet only would be best for sound quality.

Electricity:

Electricity is onw of the aspect that i am the most unsure about. Unsure about how i should split the equipment on each breaker to make sure everything has enough power.
From the little knowledge i got here how i see things:
-1 breaker for lighting and future projector
-1 breaker for receiver and electronics
-1 breaker for future amplifier and subwoofers

In there i heard it might be a good idea to put some 20A outlet also.
Those this sound about right?


Do you guys have any suggestion, ideas on how you would change things, any input would be great.

Sorry if this is a bit chaotic, i didnt know really how to formulate all this, first time asking for help on this topic.
Also sorry about any errors in my english it isnt my first language.

Thanks a lot!!

Mat-
 
MalVeauX

MalVeauX

Senior Audioholic
Hi Mat,

Looks good to me. My first pass through your info and the #1 thing was there, room treatment. So you're on the right track. All good audio spaces are secondary to acoustic room treatment, and you're already thinking about it, so you are already a leg up on getting things great. Consider some bass traps in those front corners and rear corners. Maybe look at that back wall, diffuser/absorber might help a bit there without killing your mids/treble. Measuring to find your null, since you will have at least one major one in your bass frequencies will be the biggest thing to over-come with the dual subs, relative to the listening position. From there, just note your first reflection points and treat those areas first. Then just see how it sounds or measures and of course don't overdo so you don't harm your mids/treble.

Carpet is a good way to go; throw rugs even. You could do hard floor and then cover with big rugs. Up to you how you want it to look. Throw rugs allow you to change them out over time. But carpet is ideal. You don't want a hard surface floor, its a reflection nightmare and then you'd have to do more treatment to absorb the reflections and it would be hard to get it all right.

And yes having your room on its own breaker is a good choice, 20A is probably enough.

Your room is just barely a rectangle, so be mindful of the listening position; dead center is commonly not the best place. You may want to find the sweetspot and that is your primary listening position; it's probably a little farther back in the room. But keep this stuff in mind before cutting holes for Atmos.

As to your soundproofing of walls, that's just the walls. Sound will still go into your ventilation and ceiling, there's no mass there, so it will travel there and will spill into the rest of the house that way still. The walls will help dampen the sound, but its not soundproof. It's just muffled. Mass is what does it. So your plan on the walls is good, as it will increase mass. The double panel with green stuff is a common tactic. Air gaps and mass do the job well. To really sound proof, you'd build a wall, a big air gap, and then another wall and de-couple the walls so that the inner wall is isolated. That's how real soundproof studios are done. Obviously you lose a ton of your in-room volume doing that, obviously not going that direction. But anyhow, maybe add some mass to your ceiling just like your walls, if you want to contain as much in there without getting loud in the whole house. And of course, it goes both ways, so you don't hear everyone else through your walls in your theater room. And pay attention to your ventilation ducts; it's common to build a muffler, basically, for that ventilation area so that you are not trumpeting audio through the house via the ducts.

For your future projector, obviusly having speakers and subs in front of the screen may be an issue with sizing. Though this is not a big room, so you could go without a projector since you're sitting 8~10 feet away from the screen? You could just do a 75" TV or 85" if you want a big display without having to go full on projector. It's a small room for a projector to me unless you're sitting on the back wall.

Very exciting stuff! Congrats!

Very best,
 
M

Mat-

Audiophyte
Hi Mat,

Looks good to me. My first pass through your info and the #1 thing was there, room treatment. So you're on the right track. All good audio spaces are secondary to acoustic room treatment, and you're already thinking about it, so you are already a leg up on getting things great. Consider some bass traps in those front corners and rear corners. Maybe look at that back wall, diffuser/absorber might help a bit there without killing your mids/treble. Measuring to find your null, since you will have at least one major one in your bass frequencies will be the biggest thing to over-come with the dual subs, relative to the listening position. From there, just note your first reflection points and treat those areas first. Then just see how it sounds or measures and of course don't overdo so you don't harm your mids/treble.

Carpet is a good way to go; throw rugs even. You could do hard floor and then cover with big rugs. Up to you how you want it to look. Throw rugs allow you to change them out over time. But carpet is ideal. You don't want a hard surface floor, its a reflection nightmare and then you'd have to do more treatment to absorb the reflections and it would be hard to get it all right.

And yes having your room on its own breaker is a good choice, 20A is probably enough.

Your room is just barely a rectangle, so be mindful of the listening position; dead center is commonly not the best place. You may want to find the sweetspot and that is your primary listening position; it's probably a little farther back in the room. But keep this stuff in mind before cutting holes for Atmos.

As to your soundproofing of walls, that's just the walls. Sound will still go into your ventilation and ceiling, there's no mass there, so it will travel there and will spill into the rest of the house that way still. The walls will help dampen the sound, but its not soundproof. It's just muffled. Mass is what does it. So your plan on the walls is good, as it will increase mass. The double panel with green stuff is a common tactic. Air gaps and mass do the job well. To really sound proof, you'd build a wall, a big air gap, and then another wall and de-couple the walls so that the inner wall is isolated. That's how real soundproof studios are done. Obviously you lose a ton of your in-room volume doing that, obviously not going that direction. But anyhow, maybe add some mass to your ceiling just like your walls, if you want to contain as much in there without getting loud in the whole house. And of course, it goes both ways, so you don't hear everyone else through your walls in your theater room. And pay attention to your ventilation ducts; it's common to build a muffler, basically, for that ventilation area so that you are not trumpeting audio through the house via the ducts.

For your future projector, obviusly having speakers and subs in front of the screen may be an issue with sizing. Though this is not a big room, so you could go without a projector since you're sitting 8~10 feet away from the screen? You could just do a 75" TV or 85" if you want a big display without having to go full on projector. It's a small room for a projector to me unless you're sitting on the back wall.

Very exciting stuff! Congrats!

Very best,
Hello!

Thank you very much for your reply! It is pretty much that kind of advice i am looking for.

For my main listening position (MLP), i am aware that normally the dead center will get a big null, however with my dual subs setup the way they are and with the mini dsp creating a virtual sub in the middle i am probably fixing this issue, at least I think I did in my current setup (based on the REW graph I get) and hopefully will do the same in this space.
I might also set the room for a MLP that will be 1-2 foot further back so I wont have to move everything again when the projector come in, I could sacrifice the immersion for a while to prevent redoing some speaker placements.

About the soundproof part, i am totally aware i wont get a perfect soundproof room the way my house is setup and my budget. Maybe i used the wrong term to say that i am planning to treat the walls to soundproof as much as possible with the layout i have.
However i got an actual question about this. Currently i am only planning of soundproofing the walls and ceiling of the Home theater room and i was thinking of using an exterior door or maybe even an acoustic door to help. However since i am cutting a hole in the wall to access my AV rack from both side ( home theater room and AV rack closet.) Should I treat the walls of the Av rack closet? To my understanding even if the rack fit pretty flush with the wall this will be a weak point in the soundproofing I assume. I just don't know how much, however you see so many home theater with these kind of space, I don't know what they do about them?

Thank you very much for your time and advice!
 
MalVeauX

MalVeauX

Senior Audioholic
Hi,

The simple way to look at keeping sound waves in one area is to essentially always consider two things, (1) mass and (2) air gap. A very high mass door will do more for keeping sound waves contained than a low mass door. If you cut a hole in the wall, its a portal for sound waves to travel through. The only way to block it is with mass. It's a small window, so I wouldn't stress it much. You can always hang an acoustic panel in front of it as needed.

Very best,
 

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