Divided Room? (1 Viewer)

[Domonic A]

I am debating on wether I want to divide the room or leave it open. If I leave it open it would be roughly 33 X 14', divided would be 21 x 14'. I am also thinking of doing a bookcase in the front to conceal equipment so that would take off 2' from the length of the roomIf I leave it open it allows me to to do more entertaining and things in the room, but I am not sure if I can acheive good sound with this sinario. I need your advise on this.

The back wall is the furnace room and bathroom and a 5' opening to the right that goes upstairs. I do not know If I can effectively mount speakers on the back wall to achieve 7.1 or if I should just stick to the 5.1. I currently have a Marantze 8000 reciever. I do not think it would be big enough to power a large room so it may need to be upgraded. I am also unsure at this time if I am going to utilize a drop screen and projector or a large screen plasma.

I have a drawing of the basement but do not know how to get it posted, can someone help me. This will definetly help to visualize.


UPDATE:


Have just uploaded the drawing for you to look at. It
is a PDF file that can be downloaded to your computer
by clicking on the link below. It is virus-free and
hosted on Home Theater Forum's server.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/files/htr.pdf

Thanks for your help,

Domonic

 

[Ronald.H]

I had a similar situation. I have a theater area and behind the seats I have an open area with a bar. We decided not to wall off the theater so that the room would be more versitile. Instead, we are hanging a velvet curtain across the back of the theater area. For movie watching, we can draw the curtain closed to block out the light. For entertaining and football games, we can leave the curtain open so you can see the screen from the bar.

 

[Domonic A]

Ronald, How does it sound, or I guess I should ask how you are set up for sound. My concern is that if I leave the room open and wire for 7.1 the rear speakers will be too far back. Maybe I will just set up for 5.1 and run wires for a future use of 7.1, not sure, too many decisions.

Thank you.

 

[Ronald.H]

I'm running 5.1. I built in a header at the back of the theater area (about a foot down from the ceiling). I considered using the header to mount speakers for 6.1 or 7.1, but ultimately decided on 5.1. The other nice thing about the header is that it creates a nice place to mount my curtain track.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Folks,

I just uploaded Domonic's PDF file to our server.

You can take a look at it here:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/files/htr.pdf

If you have Adobe Reader/Acrobat already installed on
your system, the file will appear upon clicking
the link.

If you don't have Adobe Reader/Acrobat, you can download
the free viewer here:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

 

[Ronald.H]

Domonic,

I saw your PDF. Your set up is almost identical to mine - even the room sizes. Is there anything where that yellow line is? If not, maybe the header I mentioned would work there. You could mount speakers on it, and hang a curtain on the bottom of it to block off the room. (and you could make it motorized to the curtain closes automatically when you hit the "PLAY" button ).

I can't post URL's here, but if give me an email address, I can send you a link to see pictures of my theater. It's not quite done yet (hope to finish next week), but it might give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

As for speakers, I like the Wharfedale EVO's. The EVO DFS surrounds work well in this situation because they can project sound back to your bathroom area when the room is opened up, and when the room is closed off, they create a nice spacial sound. Plus, they look cool hanging on the wall. I bought EVO 20's for mains, the EVO Centre, and the EVO PowerCube DX12 sub, along with the DFS Surrounds. Nice speakers for reasonable cost.

 

[Domonic A]

Ronald,

Thanks for the info again. The yello line is where I was thinking about dividing the room if I choose to do so. I will take a look at closer those speakers. I was thinking about using Energy or one of the Karat series, but I am deffinately open to less expensive alternatives.

If you have pictures I would realy like to see them. If I added the header I could run 7.1, but not sure how it will sound with the front speakers bouncing off the back walls. Do you think that would be an issue?

Here is my email address: [email protected]

 

[Scott Shearer]

Ronald,

I would be very interested in seeing pictures of your home theater. I am in the process of working on a design for a new home theater in a home I hope to start building next spring. Since we are just starting to work on the design I have a lot of flexibility on size, shape, etc. but did want to do a combination theater/bar area to allow both serious movie watching and also general entertainment for larger groups.

I would appreciate it if you could send me the URL for your theater pictures. My e-mail address is
[email protected]

Thank you very much.

Scott