Hi all,I think this is my first post after a long time enjoying the content here. My home theater was recently completed after nearly a year of dreaming and planning, beginning with the purchase of Warren’s e-book last summer. In December I moved into a home with enough space to accommodate a home theater about 28’ * 15’. My theater was built into an existing room in our basement with two exterior walls. In the end, I decided to hire a professional to build the room. One of the hardest parts was finding someone to work with that shared the same ideas about budget and the willingness to let me make choices. But I did, and I’m very happy. My chief concerns were achieving high performance for the price, making sure the sound was limited to the theater as much as possible, and the acoustics in the theater. The end result has met or exceeded my expectations in those three areas. My theater has 11 speakers (7 channels + Height and Width), with four channels worth of wiring in the ceiling for an eventual upgrade to Dolby Atmos. I also have 3 custom-built subs, two sealed subs up front behind the screen wall, and one big ported sub in the rear of the theater. The person I hired has a passion for speaker design and assembly, and built each speaker and sub. At first, I was hesitant to go that direction - but after visiting his demo room and listening myself, I was sold. The front soundstage is placed behind an acoustically transparent black treatment covering the screen wall. We also have a very large quadratic diffuser on the back wall, designed specifically for the room. There are 9 acoustic absorption panels on the wall. I chose the carpet color and the color for the paint. I wanted to stay as dark as possible, so I went with a “cowboy boots and jeans” look, using brown for the walls and a blue on the ceiling. We did crown molding spaced a few inches down on the top of the walls, with an LED “tape” stuck inside the molding for some uplight. In an effort to control costs, since using the home’s existing HVAC system would not be ideal (we don’t have thermostat control downstairs), we added a dead vent system to bring in air from outside the theater in the rear of the theater and expel air on the other end behind the screen wall. The vents were designed to minimize sound transfer and they work very well. The equipment closet is also vented with a similar vent system, and is controlled by a thermostat switch. For gear, I went with a Denon 4520CI A/V receiver paired with a Sherbourn 7-channel amp with 150 watts per channel. I run the four surround channels through the AVR and the rest go to the amp. I have 3 video game systems in the theater now, Xbox One, PS4, and Xbox 360. We are using an Epson 6030 projector with a 120” screen. I have six power-reclining seats that I purchased from an online retailer after visiting their warehouse in Golden, CO (I’m fortunate to live where I do so I could choose the seats and try them out first). We will eventually add a DirecTV feed into the theater, but for now we just use it for movies and gaming. I am very pleased with the result, even though we worked with what I’d consider a modest budget. If anyone is reading this and hasn’t yet decided to pull the trigger on a project - I recommend getting started. Whether you hire it out or do it yourself, the results are worth the effort.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 21:08:32 +0000
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