Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Room Layout Ideas Wanted

Interior space is 13 feet wide by 22 feet deep. Ceiling will be about 7 feet 8 inches tall when done.



Would like 2 rows of seats (may end up with couches since I can get the same seating in less width).
Left side shows gray "stage", black bass traps, dashed line is possible screen location to get a cleaner look, but maybe not...

Toying with putting front speakers behind screen wall.

All interior walls/ceiling will be incorporating double drywall and green glue. Exterior is poured concrete from floor to ceiling with a 2x4 stud wall gapped about 2 inches in from the concrete wall. The other 2 walls will be staggered with 2x6 floor and ceiling plates and 2x4 studs staggered and 16 inches on center.

The space to the right of the theater is a family room. The space to the bottom of the image is a hallway except the extreme left 10 feet which will be a walkway and wet bar.

Going to go with 7.1 sound.

Need:
Storage for equipment
Storage for movies

I hate the idea of spending the bucks to do some sound proofing just to punch holes in the walls for equipment/movie storage.

Thoughts? Ideas? I would like to start framing the room this coming Saturday.

If you put speakes behind the screen wall, then you should use 3 identical speakers with an accustically transparent screen. Depending on budget, I'd use 3 M80's, or 3 M60's, or 3 M22's. It might be better to use the in-cabinet versions with the ports on the frontsize, because the bass traps may interfere with the rear ports on the other version.

As for subwoofer placement, I'd wait and try it in different places to see where you get the best sound quality. Don't plan on a single placement, because you'll be dissapointed later.

Nick already has speakers, i do believe he is adding a 180 soon. Nick, can't help with green glue, soundproofing, etc. Everything I've read is you need to be disconnected from your two walls, otherwise the sound/vibrations with transmit right through any dual layer, insulation, etc. Not familiar with the green glue. Will give some thought to your AV equipment placement.

Thanks for stepping in Randy.

Yea, I don't want to dump my M60s for M80s, and I heard that the VP180 is purely awesome. I don't see how having the speakers behind the acoustically transparent screen/wall would be impacted by the bass traps any more than if they were directly in front of them like others have done. I am sure that there is some difference, but the wall would be more of a culprit than the bass traps, in my opinion (and I could very well be wrong, just thinking out loud so to speak).

As for the sub, I am going to put a couple of sub "jacks" in the walls and see what works doing the ol' subwoofer crawl. My plan is also to add a second sub to the mix to help keep things more even in the room.

Someone at work told me to put the equipment and movies in the back corner near the top right of the diagram. His idea was to build a "cabinet" in the wall there for the equipment and movies and would bump the wall outward into the family room area, but along the outside wall, and not in the middle of the basement as if it was in the lower right part. He said, just frame it bigger, and do the double drywall, Green Glue deal in there, stagger the studs, etc. I would need to seal the crap out of the edges and corners, but that MIGHT work. It seems a bit tight though with the seating.

I was looking at the ever popular K-Mart home theater seats. 2 rows reclined requires 11 feet by 11 feet of space, this I would only have 2 feet to get around the front row, and a 2 foot wide opening maximum for the equipment/storage rack.

Keep in mind too that I just will have a receiver, blu-ray player, hd-dvd player, and satellite receiver. I would leave some space for any sort of future expansion, but that is the basic count of items anyway.

The other option that I thought of (just brainstorming in my own thread) was a small (short) equipment rack that sits off in one of the front corners in front of a bass trap. Short enough to be under the screen. that still doesn't help with the dvd storage issue though.

I didn't look at the name of who left the message when I replied. I was just assuming it was a newbe, oops. I hadn't had my first cup of coffee yet.

Personally, I would want the equipment away from my view so all the lights wouldn't affect the viewing pleasure. As for movie storage, you could put that in a different room. There's no reason to have to have it in the HT room.

I've always heard, and it makes sense, that 3 identical speakers across the front would sound the best. Since you already have the M60's.... But I suppose you could mount a VP180 on a stand behind the screen so that it's approx in the center of the screen. I would raise the M60's also.

I thought that the rear ports had to fire off of the rear wall from about 2 to 8 inches in order to get their effect.

I used Green Glue and am happy with the results. I have a HT in the corner of my basement where one wall faces a bedroom and the other interior wall faces a hobby room that is overrun by Simpsons memorabilia. But I digress.

I don't know what the results would have been going with single sheetrock (didn't do an A-B comparo), but I can listen to a rock CD really loud in the HT and then step outside it and notice a huge dropoff, like it's just minimal background noise. I know this is very vague - I probably need to get an SPL meter to quantify this, and help with calibration, etc - but, again, I'm happy.

Note: I highly recommend the use of an exterior door, or other such solid door for the entrance to your home theater. If you use a typical interior door, it's hollow and will sabotage your soundproofing efforts.

'ollow doors and zer evil ways. Saboteurs! All of zem!

Mr. Cat (Using that just because I like the sound of it). No worries about thinking I'm a newbie. My previous hypnotic avatar has probably just put you into a more relaxed state that you have yet to recover from.

I agree that there is a guideline that 3 identical fronts should create the best soundstage. I just would hate to buy a 3rd M60 just to have something change down the road and then really wish I had a "regular" center channel. As for the ports, if the speakers were behind the screen/wall, I could push them a little more towards the middle of the room (not IN the middle, but a little away from the wall since they will be behind the screen) and have solid wall behind them and not the bass traps. I would probably mess with amounts of toe-in since they won't be as wide.

I was planning on messing with heights as well, thus half of the reason for the stage. Raise the speakers a little bit, plus I like the look.

As for the lights up front, that it a concern of my wife's and I tend to agree. I would probably construct the cabinet and put some tinted glass (not glass with vinyl tint on it, but real tinted glass) like I used in my MAME cabinet. IR and RF signals go right through just fine, but it can block a lot or light depending on the level of tint.
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I am glad to hear that the Green Glue seems to be a worthwhile investment. I am still debating if I should go the normal 2 tubes per 4x8 sheet for the ceiling and just 1 tube for the walls to try to keep costs down (plus I am staggering the walls already) or if I should just cough up a few hundred $$$ more and do 2 tubes for the whole thing. I wasn't AS concerned about sound leaking into the rest of the basement since there is a whole other set of walls between the home theater and the bedroom that will get very rare use down there anyway.

Oh, and exterior door with all of its seals is what was planned. Not sure yet if I should do a steel door (original idea) or if an external fiberglass door would work as long as it is solid.

I've got time to figure that out though. As long as I get the opening framed right for the size and maintain some level of decoupling through the wall, I can decide that part a little later.
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So, ideas on the storage and equipment?

I will have to run the idea of the movies stored in another room past my wife. I don't see what the difference is between walking to the back of the theater to find a movie vs. looking in a storage cabinet half way down the hall just outside the home theater, but you know wives... (note that I didn't say "women". Didn't want to offend SonicFox if she happens to read this.

Nick,
If you're going to position the equipment out of the way make sure to think if they have on-screen displays or not. My Pio receiver has no OSD so I need to be able to read the front for channel level, sound mode etc... That may or may not affect where you want to place the equipment.

Also, don't forget about your air vents in the HT room - that's an easy way for sound to find its way out and could undo to some extent all of your other efforts. When I was building I had one of the local pros come evaluate and give me ideas (free visit cuz I was buying stuff from them). I would never have thought of that if he hadn't pointed it out.

Movie storage - I am partial to some nice thin book shelves in the back of the room. It keeps all of the HT stuff in the HT room and doesn't take up much space in the room. I am using some cheap Ikea shelves that I ended up cutting to a good height for my low ceilinged basement HT room.

Nick you could hide your equipment in another room/closet and use one of these

http://sewelldirect.com/IR-Injector-Kit-For-HDMI.asp

Good point about the OSD. My previous receiver (Pioneer Elite) had it, but since I will need to buy a new receiver with this theater I will be sure to check that.

Good idea on the shelves. Maybe they could serve as some level of diffusion panel. I will just alternate between blu-ray/hd-dvd and regular DVDs to create different thicknesses, etc. (just kidding by the way). That might be a viable solution to put some narrow shelving in for movie storage that is in the room instead of in the wall, and a small equipment rack up front with tinted glass.

I also am going to take the current duct in the room and add flex-duct to the end of it and snake it around in a soffet. Someone told me that at two 90 degree bends in the flex-duct decreases the sound transmitted through the duct by 60% or something. I figure that I can make that happen. Good thing about being in a basement is that the temps are fairly consistent year-round. Probably a 10-15 F degree variance from the hottest to coldest day, so that helps.

Randy, I was planning on some level of IR repeater if the equipment ended up in the back of the theater, but I guess that it could be relocated elsewhere, I guess. I think that there is great value in having it in the room, but maybe.....

are you going to have easy access behind the transparent wall, maybe you could have all your equipment back there, not sure.. anyway, I'm sure it will be the best v.buol theater yet.

What an awesome project, Nick. I am very envious of your opportunity to build (4.0?) from the ground up.

The movie storage is a tough nut. Having just spent some time with Ray and hearing him wax rhapsodic about his 9 terrabytes of storage, I again wonder about the relevance of physical media. But - if you have a big movie collection and enjoy the ritual of browsing and selecting disks - good for you. Storage of physical media does "cost" both in terms of the shelves you'll have to buy as well as the cubic feet of your home that you have to devote on an ongoing basis. On a "new, ultimate home theater build", I'm not sure I could justify a bunch of space, but my viewing habits are undoubtedly different from yours. Plus, I've never really liked the aesthetic of DVD spines.

Yeah, I'm not "helping", I know.



That's NOT a lot of equipment. You barely need a "rack". That being said, you might want a PC in there or some amps or something, someday. I really like the idea of putting the equipment in the wall in the upper right corner of your diagram (the right-rear of the room). Build a little closet type of enclosure that is open (or glass-door) to the theater room, but with heavily damped access to the back of the "rack" from the family room. Personally, I'd sacrifice a little soundproofing to ensure ongoing access to the back of the equipment closet. You could also put network stuff and oddball tech storage in there.

Put an IR repeater at the front of the room or something so you're not clicking over your shoulder.

Fun! Take some pictures and post some wiring diagrams and stuff.

I like the sewell poduct, no wireless involved, all through extra channel on HDMI cable and compatible will all remotes.

I have enough physical discs to be quite the undertaking to get media bits (zeros/ones) transferred from disc to disk (BD to HDD). I would keep the players for versatility and those quick needs (last minute Red Box rental), but would need to spend money and time on setting up a HTPC. Oddly enough, I was planning on some sort of expansion options for a cheap laptop to be connected with a wireless keyboard/mouse for some things, but heck, my Sony blu-ray player in our living room has so much internet connected options, I am not sure that I would actually use a basic laptop.

I would need to make the decision soon if I am going to need physical disc media storage and put shelves in somewhere, or make space for a HTPC and be forced to build one some time in the near term with a bunch of storage. Obviously I would only transfer over the movies that I really wanted to have "on-line".

Hmmm... I bounced that idea off of someone at work, and he said that he just started using his XBox Kinect for some movie viewing options, but the XBox is going to be in the family room in the basement, not the home theater. I guess if I had the movies stored on another machine in the house that had the space, I would just need to stream it (via a physical CAT5 connection) to something that can play it back in its full HD video and HD audio glory, but who knows what they would take.

So, while there are $$$ associated with physical media storage, there is probably more cost in a HTPC or streaming setup, plus added complexity that *could* make things more complicated than my wife/kids would care for unless done absolutely correctly.

I'm going to need some inexpensive dvd/bd storage soon and I've been looking at this from Walmart.

Thought I'd pass it along in case someone else might like it too.

This will be a fun build. Not as fancy as a lot of the theaters out there, but I just keep moving up, so that's good.

V1.0 was an existing children's playroom in our house 2 houses ago (circa 2000) that had all sorts of dents and crayon marks on the walls. My sound treatments were using adhesive to "glue" thick felt to the walls/ceiling (which actually reduced a lot of sound echo in the room) and using a variety of Christmas light strands, intertwined with some set to "twinkle" and all of that covered by a different type of felt for a "star ceiling". The room was chock full of crappy KLH speakers all over the place. Heck, it was a 10.2 setup. Bass shakers and real movie theater seats (8 of them) plus a couch up front. The screen was a massive 47" rear projection TV elevated off of the floor. I was, however, the first person I knew that had DTS in their house, and DTS titles were very rare. Colors in the room : Black and gray

V2.0 was in a common area in the basement of my previous house. I finally decided to get some better equipment. Pioneer Elite receiver, a nice Sanyo front projector, a massive SVS sub, and of course, my Axioms. Pictures can be found on my web site at Click here and then click on the 2.0 link under The Incredibles screen shot. Seating was a single 4 person couch, lighting control was horrible (dimmable lighting zones, but despite solid metal window blinds, light still came in more than desired during the day. No sound treatments. Added a hd-dvd player over time. Colors in the room : Light blue, dark blue, white, and taupe.

V3.0 was at the same house, but I moved everything into a dedicated room. Click here and then click on the 3.0 link. The equipment stayed the same (added a blu-ray player, popcorn machine, and my fiber optic star ceiling). Couch changed to something more comfortable, but still crappy and only had seating for 4 on it. Room dimensions were junk, but I could make the room really dark (4 dimmable light zones, no windows, and a super thick curtain for a door. No sound treatments, but some cool looking carpet. Colors in the room : Black, gray, and dark blue.

V4.0 is in our current house that we bought the end of May this year.
It will have a new receiver, new projector, new blu-ray player, and a second sub. Some level of sound proofing (DD+GG, insulation, and staggered/double walls), bass traps and 1st reflection point absorption. 2 rows of seats (for 8 people total). Fiber optic star ceiling will return as well. the room will be dedicated (of course) and built to spec instead of what was already there or available (with exception of the ceiling height and width limitations). Colors have not been picked yet.

El Gato, I probably don't even need that much disc storage. I did a big cleanup of old DVDs a couple of years ago. Maybe have a couple hundred left. That would be about 2 times or more than what I need, but it is an idea. For the cost, it is pretty good and is one less thing to have to construct. Although, building one would give me control of wood color to match anything in the room. Nice option though. Thanks!

Yeah, Nick, I know - "change" is complicated. Especially for the OTHER users in your house.

How about some pretty shallow shelves completely covering the back wall? Or maybe just down to about the top of the backrest for the rear-row chairs (presumably with sheetrock flush below that for a built-in look)? That would be A LOT of media storage, and if you interspersed other objects / nooks / crannies in there, you'd have a built-in diffuser, too. If you had shelves like 6" deep (or something) you could subtract that depth from the utility closet for the equipment (i.e. have the equipment rack present as just another opening in the shelf array).

You could mount the QS8 rears on panels that are flush with the front of the shelving.

You'd still have the media "in the room" but they wouldn't be in your usual field of vision.

Where the hell are Bob and Mike? Need some professionals (or at least some craftsmen) on this thing!

I like the "build in" look, but maybe for media, instead of building into the wall, I could build ON to the wall like you mention. Sort of like building the soffets after the whole room has been DD+GG'd. Keeps a solid "shell" for sound proofing, but still the internal elements for functionality and style.


Maybe Bob and Mike can just design the darned thing.

I seem to remember reading an article back in the day where Industrial Light and Magic said that all of their effects work on Jurassic Park totaled 9 terabytes. Insane at the time.

So I think that we are now looking at flipping the room... Screen on the right, seats on the left. There is going to be a wet bar to the lower left of the home theater, and I was thinking that while not ideal, I could still bump out an equipment and movie storage in that area, still making staggered walls, and still DD+GG for them. I will be sealing the first layer of drywall with acoustical caulk sealant too. That will keep the equipment in the room, but not up front where I need to worry about LED lights disrupting or distracting from the movies. I will still need to put in some sort of IR repeater (maybe that HDMI one that Randy mentioned earlier). Flipping the room and putting things back in that area would allow for me to build an equipment rack that would accommodate future upgrades or added gear as need be. I am not completely sure on how to make the media and equipment storage look like part of the room. The equipment shouldn't be too bad since things are pretty much all black, but with movies, you have all of the spines on the cases in all sorts of different colors.

I was thinking about using curtains on the front wall to also mask the 2.35:1 screen, and then maybe put 3 columns on each side of the room, and in between the columns, put more of the curtain material pulled tight, but with more width in the curtain that the space I need so that it will be all "pleated" but cleaner than just "hanging" there. Then I could put curtains over the storage/equipment area as long as I had some air flow for the equipment.

Maybe not though since it could either come out neat like a regular movie theater, or end up looking sloppy. Either way, I think that I have a game plan. I thought that I would have been framing it up earlier today, but I wanted to put more thought into things, and decided to finish up framing around duct work and the main drain pipe that comes from upstairs. My wife also wanted a small cubby hole as a decorative element in the family room, so I had to tear out some studs and rework it. Now, I just have a single 9 foot duct that runs right along side of the main support beam that will take about 30 minutes to frame up and then I can start the staggered walls.

I knowingly underestimated on my stud order and will probably run out about 2/3 of the way through the 2 home theater walls, but that is OK. I will only have one more wall and one 10 foot long duct to construct for the game room area and between there and the storage room. My goal is to be 100% framed up by the 20th. That will be 30 days since I got my permit. Then get all of the electrical done in 3 more weeks (I will be out of town for work for 1 week). Somewhere in there I do need to add a window for the bedroom, but it needs to be ordered so it may actually end up coming about the time I am half way through the electrical.

I also need to decide if we are going to remove a 10'8" beam that runs in line with one of the stairwell walls and put in a 14' replacement (had an engineer do all of the numbers for us). The beam rung about $170, but I am a little nervous about having to jack up the trusses about 1/8" in order to pull out the old beam where it rests on the concrete exterior wall, and then manhandle the new one in place just to open things up a couple of feet at the bottom of the stairs. Lots to think about.

Well, the other nasty ductwork framing is done (more to do later) and we started messing around with the home theater size. It is amazing how much easier it was for my wife to visualize the area when I measured, snapped a chalk line, and put down some masking tape (to make it easier to see). Looks like my room gets to be a little bigger! We are now looking at 14 feet wide by 24 feet long. The extra width will be a huge help for screen/front speaker placement as well as well as more space to walk around the front row of seats!

Anyway, time to get back down there are start building some walls.

I just did something similar. It wasn't too bad really. Just braced the trusses with 2x4's and hammered shims to raise it up. Sounds like your task is a little more difficult because of the exterior wall thou.

Before:


During:


After:


Also, you're really making me jealous with all of you talk of sound proofing. I've tried to make minor decisions to help disconnect my basement HT from the upstairs but at best it's going to make so little difference I'm sure everyone upstairs will think they are sitting in the same room.

Yeah, I would REALLY like to do some soundproofing, but the ceilings are so low in the basement to begin with. I don't really have the clearance to make a serious attempt at it.

First wall (or third, depending on if you count the 2 existing exterior walls) is up. Room will be 14 feet wide after the double drywall. The back/left of the picture will be the equipment rack. I decided to just stagger those areas and will DD+GG the inside of the rack area so that it is still at the same sound proofing level as the rest of the room.

I am building shelves into the back wall as well (they will look "built in" but in fact will be mounted in front of this main wall.

Goal is to have the long 24.5 foot (exterior length) wall with doorway framed up before Friday. Then I will work on the last pieces of duct work framing and the final basement wall between the game room and storage area. Then off to California for work next week. I hope to come back to a window to put in (stinking custom order) and will start on the electrical.

We are 99% sure that we want to replace the 10.5 foot beam that links the one side of our stairwell with the exterior wall with a 14 foot beam to open up the bottom of the stairs a little more. I know the process, and even with the (yet to be built) home theater wall helping to hold up the house, and a temp wall as well, I am still nervous about it.

Here is a snapshot of the first (or third) wall...

Yup, there is an empty MAME arcade cabinet and 4-player control panel, oh, and my Theatre of Magic pinball (up on end) in the photo as well.

Got the back wall and equipment walls squared up and attached. Built almost half of the side wall and have it squared up and secured.

I managed to get an extra 3.5" (one 2x4 width) length to the room. Not much, but I'll take it.

Nick,
Just curious - I notice the base plates for the walls are green pressure treated instead of regular lumber. Is that the building code for your area? Where I am we either put regular base plates on top of the sub floor or if going directly on concrete we vapour barrier underneath the bottom plate. The PT idea makes a lot of sense though, even with vapour barrier I'd think.

Green treated is required for code here. Any lumber that is directly in contact (code says "directly attached") to concrete, needs to be green pressure treated. I would love to have been able to use the cheaper, lighter, more size consistent "white board" instead if it just meant adding a vapor barrier.

Green treated/PT is code here as well. I never found it harder to work with thou, in fact I rather like it since its much more solid wood (nails guns don't blow it up as easy as regular white). It is more expensive but since it's only being used on the bottom plate I don't consider it to be very significant myself.

I'm just finding that since the stuff is cut first and then treated, the chemicals tend to make it expand a little and thus the bottom plates are wider than the top, non-treated wood.

It wasn't really a problem with the 2x4s, but the 2x6 stuff varies a noticeable amount.

I haven't had issues with either wood type as far as using my framing nailer goes. They both eat the nails about the same. Maybe the white splits a hair easier when trying to get an odd angle on it, but no blow throughs for me.

It sounds like it would be best to use treated wood as both the top and bottom plate then. Or would that cause problems else where?

I think that it is mainly a cost issue. Of course, any time wood is wet, it doesn't always (hardly ever) dries straight. Having one board that could bend and twist as it fully dries is better than two.

I've just been taking ones that are off by a lot and ripping them down a little bit to make them similar in width, and cutting to length. (I had a 10 foot 2x6 green treated that was more than 1 inch longer than the matching non-treated board of the same length).