How to build a dedicated home theatre

[Prof]

Firstly to clarify, "a dedicated home theatre" means that the room you will be using will only be used for watching movies and perhaps some TV..

A home theatre can range in price from approximately $5000 - $500,000 and more !! Some American home theatres cost over 1 million dollars !!

This tutorial will describe how to build the lower end of the range..

Firstly you will need to find a suitable room..The bigger the better, but it must have four walls and a door..Open rooms connecting other rooms will not be suitable..

The other aspect of a suitable room is whether you need the theatre room acoustically removed from the rest of the house..

This requires an additional construction to the room to isolate it from the other rooms..

I will include briefly what needs to be done, but for the most part I will proceed on the basis that this will not be needed..

There are a variety of building materials that are used to construct rooms in a house..Timber or steel framing with plasterboard walls, or brick or concrete block walls..

Each of them have their own acoustic values..

The stages of the building process...

1. Selecting the room..

2. Acoustically isolating the room..

3. Selecting the wall and ceiling paint or fabric coverings..

4. Choosing the type of floor coverings..

5. Setting up the front of room for screen and speakers..

6. D.I.Y the screen or purchasing a commercially made screen..

7. Adding acoustic panels on the side walls..

8. Adding acoustic panels in the front corners..

9. Adding acoustic panels to the rear of the room..

10. Selecting the front speakers..

11. Selecting the surround speakers..

12. Selecting the subwoofer..

13. Choosing the lighting..

14..Selecting Amplifier/ receiver..and ancillary equipment

15. Selecting Blu-ray player..

16. Programming the whole system..

So as you can see there is a lot to building a dedicated home theatre..But the end result is a very satisfying movie experience.. 

More to follow..

[KatieC]

This is really great @Prof !

Cannot wait to see the process and photos. 

I have a home that will be built in the next year so it would be amazing to play with the idea of a home theatre in our front room.

Katie

[MitchellMc]

Many thanks for sharing that information with us @Prof. I'd be keen to see some of your setup if you'd like to share it with us.

Mitchell

[Prof]

SELECTING THE ROOM:

A good size room is desirable but not essential..The only room I had available in my own home only measures 3M. x 4.5M.! But it has an 8' wide screen!

As you can see the screen is almost wall to wall...

The side acoustic panels are before the parabolic diffusers were added..along with new carpet..

The main requirement is to use a rectangular room..A square room presents all kinds of problems with standing audio waves..

The ideal room has a ratio.. Width x 1.6 Height x 2.6 Length..The height figure is not always attainable because most homes have a 2.4M.ceiling..

The main ratio is Width x 2.6 Length..

The window / windows in the room will need to covered with a blockout material..This only needs to be 3 pass blockout fabric..

If it needs to be removed at times for air circulation, then a removeable framing system will be needed..

If anyone has need of that. I'll answer how to build it in separate  emails..

[KatieC]

That is a HUGE screen for your room!

@Prof if someone only had a square room, is there anything they can do to turn it into a good theatre room?

Katie

[Jason]

Great topic @Prof. Looking forward to more updates soon.

Experienced member @maknilsin might also like to share some photos of his new home theatre and advice for others contemplating a similar project. 

Jason

[Prof]

If only a square room was available Then some extra acoustic panelling would be required..

Ideally..either additional framing over the existing walls could be added, then filled with acoustic fibreglass panels and covered with new plasterboard..

Or removing the wall panels, removing the existing insulation and replacing it with acoustic fibreglass panels..

A third option would be to cover the lower half of the walls with acoustic batts, along the full length and then covered with some acoustic fabric...

The other thing that would be needed is acoustic batts in all four corners...floor to ceiling...

Finally the seating position in the room would also be important and situated either forward or back a little from the normal position..

All of these are makeshift remedies which will help to at least limit any standing waves...

If anyone has need of that. I'll answer how to build it in separate emails..

[Prof]

SELECTING THE PAINT OR WALL COVERING...

Any white or light colours are not suitable for this theatre..

Starting at the top..The ceiling should be painted black..This will stop any reflections from the ceiling..

The walls need to be either painted or covered with non reflective fabric..

I have chosen the latter for my new theatre as seen in the photo...The walls are covered with crushed velvet which helps to dampen high frequencies..

If you're painting the walls it needs to be a flat dark colour..like a dark grey, or grey / blue or grey / green..The main thing is to keep it dark as possible..

Any light or lightness in colours will reduce the perceived contrast of a projected image..

[Prof]

ADDITIONAL ROOM CONSTRUCTION...

One other thing that can be added to the room is ceiling trays or soffits...

I prefer the ceiling trays for the reason that if you're doing downlighting, it's easier to get to the back of the LED lights if you ever need to replace one..

The other benefit of having ceiling trays is that you can lay down acoustic fibreglass panels along the whole length for additional acoustic control..

As you can see in the photo..I have installed ceiling trays around the perimeter of the room..

[Prof]

FLOORING..

Whilst a polished timber floor might look nice, it's not suitable for a dedicated theatre..

The floor ideally needs to be solid concrete..Obviously this is not always done in the construction of a home..

Whatever your floor is, it needs to have a layer of acoustic under felt with a fairly plush carpet on top...

When you are looking at patterns for the carpet, keep it fairly simple with muted tones..

As you can see with my carpet it's bright with a big pattern !! A big mistake I made!! It can be very distracting when watching a movie when the projector lights up the whole room in a bright scene...