2. home-theater
  3. 1157858807

Help Me Build my Home Theater room

I bought a bungalow. I will be adding a second floor for bedrooms. It closes April 07 so I have a lot of time to prepare for everything. The garage has been excavated and is the future theater room. Size is 24L x 20W x 8H. Two of the walls are foundation walls and ceiling is the garage floor - all concrete. I will excavate the room to put tiered seating in, therefore the front of the room will be close to10 feet tall (screen is going here) and going to the back and the entrance it will be 8 feet tall. The door size is 5 feet. Do I put 2 2'6" doors or one 3 foot as the entrance? I want the room to be as soundproof as much as possible. I have bought motorized berkline leather seating. Two rows of five and the back row against the wall will get a sofa. I bought RBH T3 speakers T1 centre with the SE66 surrounds. I will be buying in wall SI 760 for the rear to make it 7.1. I want the walls to be wood paneling (Oak). On the sides I will build columns to accommodate the side surrounds and in the lower section the 1010 SE bass speakers. These columns will be aprox 7 to 8 feet from the back of the room (SE 66 mounted on these) and another set of columns 14-15 feet from the back of the room. How high should I mount the SE 66 from the floor up? These columns will also have lighting in them. I am looking at the Bryston amps. Three 7B sst for the Left Centre and Right and a 9B sst 4 channel for the rear (SE 66 and SI 760). For the processor the Bryston SP2. I am impressed by the fact the 5.1 is balanced outs but the rear two channels use RCA non balanced as outputs. Am I being to concerned about this? The subs have there own amps SA 400. Can anybody suggest anything else? I an looking at 1080P projectors but I can't decide any help and info? Also any info for Screens Curved or flat? I want to project 2.35:1. I want a 120 inch screen. I will be going to Cedia in Denver next week to look. I also want everything to be automated Crestron Amx Elan I want the system to control lights alarm thermostat curtains etc again need Help? The house has 400 amp service and I will also have a dedicated room 7x12 for all home run cables and all the equipment to be stored in. This is my first time doing this and I plan on living here at least for the next 30 years so I want to do it right the first time. Any and all help is appreciated

Thanks Zisi
z_man
flrnlamb
508 posts
 
Could you please give me your email or phone to discuss your options here? I believe you'd be interested in what I have to recommend. Thanks
glenfihi
525 posts
 
Sounds like you will have a very nice home theater. My two cents would be to make sure you install ac lines reserved for your gear. Twenty amp circuits if possible. Better sound and no problems from other things in house. Good luck.
Glen
jbomber
11 posts
 
Some thoughts:

I have a large (23x25) dedicated home theater with a 123" screen. I'm using a Sony G90U and running all of my sources through a Faroudja 5000. Here's what I've learned.
1. As Glenfihi said, wire your Projector and amps on independant circuits. The sound won't be affected as much as the display -- very sensitive to noise.
2. I've found the the 123" screen is too big. If I were to do it again, I'd run a 110" or even a 100" screen.
3. If you do 2 rows of seating, you'll need to decide on whether you want to comprimise on the sweetspot, or have your sweetspot in the front row, at the expense of the back row.
4. If you have young children and like to watch action flicks at night, you need to take every measure to keep the bass from vibrating your house. My theater is in our attic, and we can feel the bass 3 floors down when we have the right movie showing -- doesn't help the kids sleep.
5. I've seen some stunning displays on 100" screens from the Runco single-chip DLP projector, and from the Runco 3-chip ($25K) on a 110" screen.
6. In that big a room, it's less neccesary to place the center channel speaker behind the screen, but you may want to experiment.
7. I used to run seperate amps, and I found it a bit tedious to get all of the sound synched up properly. Now I run a Mac MHT-200, and the sound is awesome.
8. Crestron, Elan and AMX are really intended for controlling whole-house automation. I think they might be a bit of overkill for just operating a theater, and you'll be paying ~ $10K for a theater controller. I think there are quite a few sub-$2k (including programming) options that will do everything you want.
9. Use 2 subwoofers to really add punch to the whole room.
10. Mount your surrounds well above your ears (when sitting) and use dipole speakers. The sound that comes out of the rear and surround speakers is 99% ambient and effects, and you just want it to fill the air behind your head, not be directed at your ears.
11. Most important!! Hire a pro to calibrate and fine-tune your picture and sound. And recalibrate the picture every year or so. This has made a huge difference in my theater.
12. I'm not a huge cable freak, and have had great success using both Tara RSC and Monster for my sound (Monster being 1/4 the price). But I have learned that you want to use the best cable you can afford to connect your Processor to your display.
13. My $6K+ Mac receiver has no HDMI or DVI inputs. Your new sources for satellite and broadcast media will need these. Be sure to buy a processor that has multiple hi-def inputs and at least 2 hi-def outputs.
14. You may want to mount a plasma or other display for casual viewing. I'm not sure that you want to fire up your theater to catch the late-night scores or to watch an NTSC broadcast for 30 minutes.

that's enough fo now.
flrnlamb
508 posts
 
So what have you decided to do? Where are you going from here?
More to discover