Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners The HT Room Design

Like so many others on the forums, wei've come to the point in time where we are building our media room from scratch. We've purchased a new home and will be putting together a room about 11x18.
The floor plan (area D will be the media room, area A a spare bedroom, area B the games area and area C is going to be a wine cellar..see this link):



Now there are many things i've considered about designing this room, many pictures sifted through, many forums read, many websites perused, but ultimately we still do not have a whole ton of ideas as to what to do with this.
The room will be well insulated, but not sound proofed. The floor joists will also be insulated prior to adding a ceiling.
The ceiling for this room will be drywalled, not drop design and i have already thought ahead about having an outlet placed in the ceiling for a future front projection unit. I will also add an 'open' outlet for component video or hdmi connections leaving a pull string to run it later if necessary.
Wires will be run in-wall for a 7 speaker setup so in the least i need to figure out speaker locations ahead of time so no test listening to find best location unfortunately.
There will probably be wainscotting and baseboards, but no other real fancy features. We have to decide if we are going to add any 'architectural' interests to the walls or ceiling, but probably nothing too big. If we so decide to sell the house in the future we cannot have a room that ppl would walk into saying, "Oh my god that is so 2000s". We are keeping it simple and formal traditional (woods, stones, metals, earth tones, no flowery prints, etc.).
We have decided to put less wide, French doors as the entrance to the room, fixing them up with weather proofing materials (e.g. door sweeps, weather stripping) to keep them from rattling and help with sound insulation. We will also be putting some heavy curtains across the back wall in front of the doors to help with light dampening and sound dampening.
There should be a location to the right hand side near the front to build a cubby insert in the wall, about 6 feet wide and maybe 5 feet tall as a location for the electronics rather than having them in a stand against the otherwise flat wall. This removes them from the line of sound entirely while breaking up the room shape as well. It is likely that we will have some bookshelf units in this room to hold dvds.
The room will have a thick plush carpet and at present will also house our 2 oversize loungers (chair and a half style, 6' long). We will be placing beanbag chairs at the foot of the loungers for extra ppl when necessary and a console will fit between the loungers. There is not much room left for other furniture so further sound tweak will have to come from things like wall panels or curtains.

Any further ideas, tips or suggestions from those who have already gone down the pre-construction path would be helpful.
Links to simple ideas and traditional look media rooms would also be of great use.
The construction should begin this September, so we have 2 months to work out a plan. We are presently interviewing designers and building teams. Pictures of the completed rooms will be posted after it is done.
Of course, the sound system for this room is comprised of our Axiom speaker set.

Congratulations on the new house, Chess. The media room sounds terrific! Having no experience with media rooms, I'll offer no suggestions. Just wanted to express my pleasure with your move into a new home. Looking forward to the pics.

Thanks Jack.
I'm almost wondering if i've covered off enough items that perhaps i've left no room for suggestions to be made hmm?

How much height do you have to play with ? That will let us crunch the room modes and see if you want to be building in any wall treatments etc..

Hey Chess:
Having never been through the process, I don't have any substantial recommendations.

But... I will say that with all the bad acoustic issues I've had in my room, I know that if I were building a room from scratch I would definitely be putting absorbant and diffusing acoustic panels in there from the get-gp... especially at those "reflection points" on the walls and ceiling!

In my last house I built a large basement room solely for the purpose of audio listening. Some of the items that I could suggest would focus on the infrastructure - primarily electrical circuits and cable systems.

Ensure that you have an adequate supply of circuits installed. My suggestions are to have dedicated circuits/breakers for the AV equipment, lighting, and accessory items within the room. While this may have no effect on AV quality, it will ensure that you do not have a breaker trip, and you have to fumble around the room! I would suggest 2 circuits for the AV equiment, 1-2 for accessory outlets, and one for the lighting. This assumes your panel has sufficient capacity. If you are pulling wires from the electrical panel, a couple of more add little cost. Also make sure your grounding is sufficient to each box.

Also, you indicate that you will be drywalling. I did the same, and placed conduits inside the walls to allow future expansion I simply terminated them in wall boxes with matching covers. This allowed me to pull any new cabling into areas. This came in handy when I wanted to add surround and network connections. Even if you put conduits to areas, and sealed the ends, at least your flexibility is ensured. This of course is a personal decision.

We could address the issues of materials, which could address acoustical concerns, but you indicate a need to be practical and functional, without sacrificing decor. Based on some of the rooms I have seen - and the thread that once existed - I would agree with you on that point.

If I remember other items, I will be sure to post.

The height of the ceiling with drywall should be about 8'.

In reply to:

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While this may have no effect on AV quality, it will ensure that you do not have a breaker trip, and you have to fumble around the room!

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Considering there is no window in this room, this is reasonable advice.
We are going to be meticulous about how to setup the room for future expansion cable-wise.

I would certainly like to sound proof the room as much as possible, but i think within reasonable budget constraints, the R20 insulation along with drywall should be sufficient for our needs at this time. We are still planning on putting a custom home together (this is another transition home for 4-6 years) and when we do, i'll be designing the room with more exacting specs in mind. Since we are buying into what this house has for a basement, the media room dimensions are limited to what i have plus or minus a foot in 2 dimensions. If i can eliminate some standing waves within those limits, then i can at least modify the room dimensions slightly before we begin to build. I had actually thought about tapering the room towards the back a bit, but i could do that myself afterward with sound panels.
All the advice is much appreciated.

On the upside, it looks like i might have enough room to put a tasting table in the wine cellar.

Check this out... nothing you couldn't do with a little drywall...

http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=36&pagestring=Room+Setup+10

I could actually do that with some chunks of soft foam starting wide at the front and making them smaller towards the back, mounting them on the ceiling.
What is interesting is that the room dimensions coincidentally come close to fitting the golden ratio. With 8' ceilings, a 13' wide room, 18' feet long fits the profile. The room will only be about 11' wide but the rest is correct.