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..

[EricL]

Hi @Noyade

Your dumb idea is approximately worth $300 dollars if you had to buy it from a store. It's called an overbed table and is a very good idea. Unfortunately, when I proposed this idea to the wife, I was outvoted even though there was only two of us. But if I had a chance, I would build something similar.

Thank you so much for sharing your overbed TV stand.

Eric

[Prof]

Thanks Noyade...I'm pleased you liked the theatre...

Your idea of moving the TV screen closer to view is how I was years ago..It gave me that feeling of being more in the action...but I also dreamed at that time of sitting back in a comfortable lounge chair and watching movies on a big screen with dynamic and dramatic sound!!

Some years later, I began having that experience.! 😁

One problem with just having the TV closer is that you don't get good sound from a TV..You don't get that surround sound and you don't get deep bass sounds..Those were my biggest annoyances at the time..

[Prof]

Hi Eric,

I tried to take a compressed video of the room, but the image quality wasn't very good..The limited lighting in the room didn't help.!

So I'll take a series of photos and post them..The quality should be better..

[Prof]

I made the ceiling light using strips of LED's mounted in a cabinet with an opal diffuser on the face..

One of the surround speakers had to be mounted to the door..

The large vertical panels are parabolic diffusers..

They absorb low frequencies, diffuse mid frequencies and reflect high frequencies..

The screen is an acoustically transparent material..purchased from the US..

All the main front horn speakers and the horn subwoofer are behind the screen..

The operation of theatre..lights, power, audio and video is controlled by the single silver remote on the arm of the chair..

The projector is mounted in the room behind the back wall..

The device next to the projector is a Dolby video processor..

There is a built in cupboard across that back wall, so I have access to the projector by just opening the cupboard doors..!! 😀

Also in this cupboard is all my theatre equipment..

On the top shelf is the 7 channel AV Receiver..

Next shelf down and to the left is the digital HD set top box..

Next to that is the subwoofer equalizer control unit..

Bottom shelf is the blu-ray player..

If you look closely you'll see the little red sensor units attached to the equipment..

The main sensor control unit is to the right.(out of the photo) and all the sensors are operated by that silver remote in the theatre..

[MitchellMc]

Wonderful stuff @Prof! You've really got everything covered there.

I noticed you mentioned the blu-ray player. Is disc your preferred choice of media? Have you ever considered moving to mass digital storage? Although I do appreciate the 600 odd movies I have on one mass storage device, it doesn't have the nostalgia associated with my old DVD collection. Going to a cabinet and selecting a DVD was a much more pleasurable experience than scrolling through a list of files.

I'd be keen to see your collection of blu-rays, as I assume it's almost as impressive as this cinema setup. I'd also love to hear a bit more about this "acoustically transparent material" used for the screen. Do the sound waves from the speakers behind it not distort the material at all with vibrations? Sorry, that might be a silly question.

Mitchell

[Prof]

Yes I'm of the old school Mitchell..disc is my preferred media..I do like going to the shelves and selecting a movie from my 70 odd meager collection.. I certainly don't have 600 movies..YIKES !!!

Thanks for the compliment on the theatre..Yes the acoustically transparent screen has millions of tiny holes in it allowing sound to pass through..

The reduction in sound is only approx. 3dB..which is barely discernible..

Also the screen is tightly stretched so very little vibration..

At the time I bought it there was no such material available in Australia..but now Oz screens carries a similar material..

[Noyade]

Hi Mitch.

"Although I do appreciate the 600 odd movies I have on one mass storage device."

Can you elaborate on this further - how does it work? I'm interested.

Prof - is that a wall mounted air-conditioner I see in one of your photos above? You wouldn't have that running during a theatre session - would you?

Patrons would complain.

[MitchellMc]

@Noyade,

I'm a bit of an avid movie collector, especially older classics. They are all kept on the one external hard drive connected to my home network. It's similar to the media servers you can purchase. It just allows all devices on the network to access the movies. You can access the drive and scroll through the available movies from the TV via the remote.

You need to be aware of the legalities surrounding downloading movies. You can't just do it from any source, and I'd undoubtedly advise against torrenting content. Most of the movies I store locally are in the public domain, and I also have a few movie streaming subscriptions. As part of those plans, you are allowed to download movies through their approved apps. For instance, Amazon Prime movies and Netflix enable you to download shows and movies to watch offline. 

I haven't added to my collection that much recently since I now have reasonably fast internet and can stream movies in HD to multiple devices without issues—that kind of makes keeping the movies locally an obsolete endeavour.

Mitchell

[Prof]

Hi Noyade,

Yes that's one of those wall / window mount air cons..It's the only size that would fit in the theatre.!! No room for a split..

It's a bit of an old rattler but the sound level when playing movies drowns it out.!! 😀

[Prof]

FRONT OF THE ROOM..

The next stage of the build is the acoustic treatment of the front wall..

This will dampen any reflected back waves from the speakers which will be behind the acoustic projection screen..and absorb any reflected  bass frequencies..

The amount of acoustic material needed will depend on the size of the room and what the echo effect is like..

The basic requirement is for the wall to be covered in 50mm. thick acoustic fibreglass..This material has a 45kg/m3 density..It is also known as 703 fibreglass..

The same material is used for the bass traps..

These are placed in the two front corners..There construction varies from placing a 1M. high 50mm. thick sheet straight across the corner..to triangular pieces fitted into the corners and extending floor to ceiling..

The latter is the most effective for absorbing bass frequencies..

The next stage is to build the framing to support the screen..

This can be done very simply by installing two vertical upright timbers extending floor to ceiling..They need to be 45 x 90 treated pine..

Attach a timber plate on each end and fix the assembly to the floor and the ceiling..

The vertical posts need to spaced out the width of the intended screen..

When fixed in position..the intended height of the screen needs to be determined..

The screen needs to be as low as possible...approx. 300mm.- 400mm above the floor..

Keeping the screen low will give you the most immersive effect of the action.. 

To affix the screen to the uprights, the most simplest and most effective way to do this is to screw a piece of timber across the uprights at the height of the top of the screen, previously determined..

The  timber to do this is a small skirting board timber that is 50mm. wide and has a 45 degree chamfered on one edge..

This will be half of what's known as a "French cleat"..One piece is fixed across the  uprights and the other piece is fixed to the back of the screen..

When placed the right way, the two pieces interlock..This makes it very easy to remove the screen ( as there are no screws holding it ) to gain access to the speakers..and the screen can also be slid from side to side to centre it..