Southern Q n' Vu (1 Viewer)

[Bobofbone]

I've been lurking and occassionally posting here, and picked up alot of ideas. When I was a kid, I found out that the White House had a home theater, and, while I had no political aspirations, I thought I might like something along similar lines. One of my professors thought the same way, and build a theater in his basement. This was along time back. He had twin 16 mm sound projectors, and collected Laurel and Hardy movies. I got him interested in the idea programing on magnetic tape, when Betamax and VHS were about to hit the market. SO, I've thought about this for awhile.
I had a setup, consisting of a rear projection 50" TV, a Pioneer Elite 5.1 amp and Polk RT 10, center and surronds and a Polk subwoofer. It went through 5 teenagers, and assorted freinds, and after coming out of 2 years of non climate controlled storage, the RT 10's rattle alot and sound bad, the center and subwoofer are dead, and the Sony amp I replaced the early 90's Pioneer amp with has channels that don't work. However, I prevailed over my wife about keeping the pool table we had earlier.
Everyone has before pictures. These were about 18 months back

I've got the back corner of a walk out basement, with a poured concrete floor and 2 walls, for a space 22' x 13' with a 9.5' height. I plan to finish framing the outer walls, and will have RSIC clips holding hat channel to place double dry wall with green glue between layers in the walls and ceiling. The equipment will be in a space outside the room, and during construction, I had no ventillation through the HVAC coming into the room. I'm placing an intake and exhaust dead vent for ventiallation, which should also reduce flanking noise to the rest of the house. I'm using a curved sectional reclining sofa with 4 seats, and placing the the screen on the opposite wall. I've also got an area next to the equipment for DVD, CD and blue ray storage.
Equipmentwise, just about everything is not very useable. I've picked up a Panasonic AU 7000 that, along with an old set of AR4x's and the 2 channels that work on the Sony amp made Raiders of the Lost Ark look pretty good on the neutral gray cement surface I tried out as a screen. I've listened to some Paradigm speakers, but haven't made any decisions on more equipment yet. Building should keep me busy.
Wires, Lutron controls, Niles IR repeaters, are here. Wood and drywall are scheduled for delivery Tuesday. RSIC clips and lots of Green Glue are arriving anytime. I hope to have more pictures soon.

 

[Bobofbone]

The outside walls have been framed, and 3 walls of sound isolation clips and channel are up.

 

[Sam Posten]

Keep em coming I wanna see more!

 

[Bobofbone]

WIRED!!

This is the one of the side walls. I'm putting a Lutron control unit next to the doorway to the equipment, to control recessed lights in the soffit, 2 sets of rope lights and ceiling fans.

This is the rear wall. It has a second switch for the soffit lights by the entry, power to the dead vents, 2 speaker outlets for surrond sound and one of the three lines for a subwoofer. It also has power, HDMI 3 component video and a CAT5 line to carry signals from an IR sensor in the front wall.

This is the wall of the adjacent room, where the HDMI, 3 component video IR and power lines will exit for the projector.
It's raining alot. I have to wait for it to stop, to allow drywall delivery. I'm told drywall works better than wet wall.

 

[Bobofbone]

It stopped raining for a few days.

The first layer of drywall is going up.

 

[Sam Posten]

Nice, I'm not real familiar with those isolators, they do reduce the size of the room a bit don't they?

 

[Bobofbone]

The isolators reduce the size of the room, but not by much. The total elevation of the isolator and hat channel is 1 1/8" off the framing. The double layer of drywall and green glue that I'm adding increases that by about another inch, for a total of about 2 1/2" per wall, or 5" across. In return, if the figures are right, I should have better sound isolation from the rest of the house. Constrained layer dampening is also supposed to attenuate sound inside the room, attenuating and partially absorbing low frequency sound. With a room 22' x 13', low frequency should be the most audible in terms of reflected sound and echos-if what i've read is correct, this should help. The lost space for better acoustics seems like a good trade off. I'll find out, anyway.

 

[Sam Posten]

Neat!

 

[Bobofbone]

The drywall is up, and the dead vents have come together.

 

[Sam Posten]

Cool, what's a dead vent?

 

[Bobofbone]

A dead vent is a device to move the air into or out of an area while preventing sound traveling with the air flow. If you leave the ventillation and cooling system into the room in the usual way, you will have an air intake and probably an air return that generally provides a direct path for sound to go into, and more often out of the room and be transmitted throughout the house. I attempted to avoid this by not directly connecting the HVAC to the room. I'm using a set of dead vents to ventillate the room. They consist of a box containing an inline fan, with curved flexible tubing (to muffle sound transmission inside the air flow) that is insulated, and stuffing the box lightly with fiberglass batting to minimize room sound coming through the box iinto the airflow. I've got one smaller blower that will bring air in near the floor with a passive air exit on the ceiling in a closed off area containing the amp and other equipment, to dissapate heat. As the area I'm pulling air from is in a heated and air conditioned walk out basement, I think the central air system should keep the air in the occupied area about the same, as long as the flow through the dead vents is sufficient. The inline blowers are rated at 450 cfm. I suspect that is with nothing hooked to either side. I'm using a variable speed control, and at 1/3 speed, I'll still have 3-4 room exhanges per hour. With a couple of ceiling fans in the room, it should be comfortable.

 

[Bobofbone]

The drywall is up, mudded, and the paint is on.

Floor and trim is next.

 

[Bobofbone]

I finished the projector mount today.

The mount on the ceiling is secured with lag screws to a reinforced section that was put in during construction of the house. I cut a port through the wall, and framing was put in to support oblique dry wall. The port is sealed, and a middle frame is placed with a shim in one corner to tilt the surface. a pane of optical glass, obtained from Edmond Optics is held on a frame I made, with the middle layer and the glass frame weather striped to seal them.

This is what it looks like with the projector in place.

This is the view from inside the theater.

 

[simook]

Looking good.

 

[Bobofbone]

Fed Ex came by

I have to pick up the rest. I hope to run the first movie in a nearly done theater by the end of this coming weekend.

 

[Bobofbone]

Done, sort of. This is what things currently look like:
Seating. All the seats have an adjacent consul and cup holder, all recline.
Front view. The screen is a DIY 138" 2.4:1 aspect, 127" wide by 53" hight (approxiamately-I haven't measured it after putting up the frame).
This is the eqipment room, opening off the left side of the room. The rack is a DIY wood structure, finished in red oak stain, with plenty of room for additionjal equipment, The room has storae space behind, and has a dedicated vetillation system to prevent overheating, if I decide I need more componenets.
This is the rear entry to the equipment room. I built shelves along both sides of the wall, with enough space for all the CD's, DVD's and Blu Rays I've picked up over time, with the same amount of empty shelf space for more. My classification system is pretty simple. The CD's are random, the DVD's and Blu Rays' are separate, and they are placed in alphabetic order. It takes less time than it sounds like, by the way. This setup also has something that I've wanted for along time; easy access to the back of the equipment, to change or install anything easily. I even put a clamp on light that I can move anywhere to enable me to see what I'm doing.
This is the Q'. The windows have a Southern exposure, to take advantage of the sunlight, both for lighting and to retain heat in the stone floor. And no, even thought it sounds green, it's finished off in shades of brown.
Wet bar and concessions area. The Hot Tamales and the Good & Plenty aren't out. The popcorn is made upstairs. `
I say it's sort of done, because I still have details to finish. But it's up and running.
Equipment used:
Projector-Panasonic PT-AE7000U
Amp-Denon AVR-3312CI
Blu Ray-Sony BDP S590
Speakers-Paradigm Monitor Series 7, fronts Monitor 11, center Monitor 3, side and rear surronds were all Surrond 3's, for a 7.1 system.
Subwoofer: 2 Epik Empires, positioned on either side.
IR repeaters-Niles, but I haven't hooked them up completely yet.
Lighting-Lutron remote for the can lights and ceiling fans. I also have accent lighting under the crown molding, with the moilding separated 1 to 1.5" from the ceiling, and acent lighting around the screen.
I thougth a description and what I learned in building would be of interest.
CONCEPT: I wanted a theater that would allow me to to view with the image and sound I wanted. I also wanted an area that would be used most of the time for 1 or 2 people, and occassionaly for entertaining small goups of 4-6 people. We were building a house of our own design, and it allowed some degree of flexibility in the initial construction details. I also wanted to reduce the sound transmitted to the rest of the house. I found that finalizing the design details for the theater came after the house. While i would have done some things differnetly, most of what I needed I incorporated into the house design. WAF entailed some compromise, but not always in the ways I anticipated.
I drew heavily on a number of sources. The first was this forum. There's alot here that can be found by joining, and using the search functions. There's also quite a bit on the "other forum" (AVS forum) that at times, has a slightly different view, and is also useful. There are also some good books available, "Premium Home Theater, design & construction", by Earl Geddes is very good. The first section of the book goes into basics on acoustics and the physiology of human hearing. The major points in this book that influenced me were 1) a home theater is generally much smaller than a commercial theater, and the behavior of sound as it relates to hearing is different. Echo that is audible tends to be low frequency-150 Hrtz and below. Higher frequency sound tends to blend, with the separation between the inital sound wave becoming inaudible in a smaller room. 2) Wall damping will give better low freqeuncy attenuatiuon and absorption, with less effect on higher frequency sound-potentially making it better in a small room. 3) Sound transmission can occur directly through ventillation systems, and can be reduced or largely eliminated. 4) There's expensive ways to accomplish some things, and cheaper ways. Both can work. I also found 2 web sites on sound isolation had lots of information and suggestions. They were http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/ and http://www.soundisolationstore.com/?gclid=CLOMr43-ha4CFY9W7AodGHFM6g. Ted White, at the Sound Proofing Company had a number of suggestions and good advice during construction.
CONSTRUCTION: The earlier posts described the dampening and constructiontechniques. Briefly, the theater is in the bottom corner of a walk out basment, with a concrete floor, and two corner walls. Two of the walls were structural, for the house, integral for support of the structure above. I used sound isolation clips and hat channel on those walls. The font and side walls were placed with a small gap between the concrete foundation, with the studs anchored to the floor, and separated from the ceiling by heavy duty vertical isolation clips. The front wall also used sound isolation clips and hat channel. The ceiling had fiberglass insulation batting, 5/8" MDF, isolation clips and hat channel applied. All the walls with hat channel had a double layer of 5/8" drywall, separated Green Glue, to provide contrained layer damening that attenuates low frequency sound leaving the area and reflecting back into the room, and providing mass to reduce high freqency sound transmission out of the room. One side wall had 5/8" Plywood placed on the studs (which were not in direct contact with the concrete foundation wall) and was covered with a cultured stone wall. This has an irregular surface to diffuse sound and with its mass (more than drywall) was intended to reduce sound transmission (it also looks good). All the walls had fiberglass insulation, and the soffits containing lights and wiring were mounted on the walls, anchoring them on pre placed hat channel under the drywall, and placing fiberglass insulation batting to reduce any internal resonance. None of the house HVACruns into the room,. There are a couple of ducts in the ceiling, using insulated flex duct, going to rooms above. The theater itself is ventillated using dead vents pictured in earlier posts, to bring in and exhaust air, and reduce sound transmission into and out of the room. I also have 2 ceiling fans in the theater. I did it beacuse I like ceiling fans. I used two because I thought (correctly) that two fans on low speed would make less noise than one fan on a higher speed. I used a laminate wood floor, on top of sound solation padding, with a Persian carpet I salvaged and had cleaned to ampen sound off the floor. Seating was intended to allow a small goup to sit in a row, instead of in short multiple elevated rows. The projector is mounted outside the room, to minimize heat to the area and noise from the projector (I found these not to be significant issues, however), and to allow a greater throw distance than I could get across the room as it was laid out. I used and area under a staircase adjacent to the theater space to mount equipment, and store media and other essentials.
RESULTS: The sound in the theater and sound attenuation outside into the house achieved what I intended. While I'm biased about how it sounds (I think it sounds good) I'll have to see how it compares as time goes on. I've also played the some of the louder parts of "Inception" and the opening scenes of the carrier launch of "Top Gun" at reference volume with the doors closed, while in the upstairs bedroom. My wife characterized it as the same level of sound she hears the trucks make on the road a mile and a half distant. Putting the bedroom ceiling fan at half speed is enough to drown out the sound from below.
WHAT I LEARNED AND WHAT I MIGHT CHANGE: Wife Approval Factor is not always what you think. Her biggest concerns (I think) were how much and how long the house would be torn up, and whether I was up to doing stuff like lifting drywall. She voice her objections before things got started, and had some convincing arguments for contracting out some of the work. They made sense, and we dis so. I estimated it would take me 2 years. The bulk of the work got done, along with some non related items, in about 7 weeks. We used the same contractor who built our house. If you use an outside contractor, I'd strongly suggest that you have a detailed set of plans and specifications, and that you work closely with guys doing the work. They also had suggestions that made sense, and improved the final result. However, you should keep in mind that sound isolation techniques that I described are not the norm in residential construction. You will need to provide lots of information and detail. Overall, I enjoyed the process and I think they did a great job. Having detailed plans and specifications also helped everything get done in the time frame I expected without any cost over runs.
It's also useful to be specific about anything that's not quite the norm. I had a millworking shop make the entry door to the equipment area. I should have been more specific aobut the wood and materials used. The wood used for a door that's going to be painted versus one to be stained and finished may not be the same quality. However, flaws in the finish are not that noticible with the lights out. The fit and function were fine.
I also found two subwoofers worked better than one, at least for me. While I didn't try doing a sub crawl to optimize the spot to place them in (They're heavy-not fun to move without wheels) I found the coverage in the room, when only one is on, is noticibly different. 2 subwoofers sound better throught the entire seating area. I would express one reservation about Epik Subwoofers, however. They took three days to answer an inquiry made on Monday or Tuesday about their product, before I ordered. I've had questions since, and have never got a reply from multiple phone calls and e-mails. I like the subwoofers. Their customer service is just about nonexistent. With this in mind, if I was ordered a set of subwoofers today, I'd probably look elsewhere.
Screen-I'm satisfied with what I made. Making a screen is not difficult. However, I'd suggest you carefully measure out what you will need. Get the projector first, and find out what size image you will end up with. The figures in the manual are an approximation. Getting or building the screen first may leave you with a screen bigger than the image you project. I didn't have this problem. However, I did find that I had a wider variety of materials for the frame available than I thought. I used construction grade pine, that I sorted through to avoid warped pieces and other defects. I used blackout cloth from http://www.carlofet.com/ I might also suggest that if you are building a screen in another room, make sure you can get it from the room you make it in to the room you mount it in. The screen I made was a tight fit, but I got it in. The cost, with all materails, was not much more than $100. A manufactured screen the same size would have been much more. The difference between a DIY screen and a lower end one the same size more than paid for one of the subwoofers. The difference between a DIY screen and one of the higher priced ones the same size paid for the differnce between theater in a box and the Paradigm speakers. I thought a DIY screen sounded better.

 

[Sam Posten]

Wonderful job sir!

 

[Bobofbone]

Thank you!