How Do I Assess a Potential Home Theater Space?

[Ed Gordon]

If you are considering creating your own home theater, here are some thoughts to consider.

Question: After several decades of renting and townhome ownership, I’m finally at a point where I’m looking to buy a single-family home. When I look at houses, I’m trying to find an area that will eventually become a dedicated home theater. What factors should I be looking at when I look at houses? What sizes and shapes of rooms are best? Should I be considering what materials the walls (and maybe the floor?) are made from? Are there modifications that are best done before we move in for sound isolation purposes or to improve the acoustics of a room? —Michael Brown

Answer: I went through a similar conundrum 20 years ago when we bought our home; I tried to find the perfect home theater room in every house we looked at, but, ultimately, we just settled on finding the best house for us…

First, we need to define “dedicated home theater” to see how realistic your quest is. If you’re talking about a room with a couch or some chairs that can support a big screen and a reasonable Atmos audio system, that’s one thing. If you’re looking to do a full-blown, six-figure, 16-plus-channel system plus multiple rows of seating, that’s another.

The truth is, unless you are buying a home that already has a dedicated theater room, it will likely be tricky to find one that will work, especially if you are interested in sound isolation. While proper sound isolation after construction is possible, it is tricky and expensive.

Bedrooms and offices are usually on the smaller side, but often only have one entrance that can be closed for light control. Homes featuring a FROG (Finished Room Over Garage) can be another candidate, but they often have weird roof angles and pitches that can severely limit screen size or seating. If you’re really serious, you could look into converting the garage, which is often a “blank slate” and can be the easiest for sound isolation. Basements also offer a ton of options where you could frame in a room to your exact specifications.

There are literally books on acoustics and room design, but there are some “Golden Ratios” that are generally considered best for acoustics, and they are always rectangular. (The worst possible room would be a cube.) One of these ratios is 1 x 1.6 x 2.33 (h x w x l). So, if the room has a 10-foot ceiling, it would be 16-feet wide and 23.3-feet long. These dimensions will yield smooth in-room response and avoid piling up modal frequencies, and also allow for great speaker placement and rows of seating.

You can definitely improve the acoustics of an existing room. Adding a heavy carpet is a good start. You can also use bass traps along with absorption/diffusion panels on the walls. The room correction built into AVRs and processors (Audyssey, Dirac, ARC, etc.) can also do a good job of taming problem frequencies. Another option is to use something like a MiniDSP and UMIK-2 microphone to take in-room measurements and make adjustments.

Perhaps the most “important” question to answer when you find a room that appears to be suitable as a theater space is, how easy would it be to run wiring in the existing room? You would need to figure out where the electronics and speakers would be located and then map out where the cables would run for each of the speakers, subwoofers, and video display. Having attic access or a crawl space can be invaluable. Best of luck on house hunting!

Source: https://www.soundandvision.com/conte...-theater-space

[Steve Klare]

Ideally (at least to me), the issue of dedicated space is first and foremost.

There was a spectacular recession the year we were engaged (1991-1992). Once I got a job again (-it was that bad!), it seemed a great time to benefit from the depressed housing market and low mortgage rates and upgrade our plans for after the wedding from renting an apartment to buying a house. We found a nice split level, which other than the mice the seller didn't tell us about, also only had a half basement.

What's the big deal? I was done with model trains and "Film Collecting" was a box of maybe twenty prints and a silent projector. Why did I need all that room?!

(Eventually we found out where Mickey was getting in and sent him packing too! -kept our cats busy for a while!)

Welllll...

I discovered S8 sound projection about 10 years later and "Film Collecting" became a bigger thing than ever. Our basement is basically a cave: good for nothing but furnace, washer/dryer, workbench and cat litter! (-not a place you'd ever bring guests!)

-so the "theater" had to join regular living space. We have a living room with a pull-down screen in the front window and a dining room with a projector cart. We have easily 100 feet of cabling snaking along the walls and down in the basement. We live in a state of perpetual compromise: my film-time needs to mesh with what everybody else in the house is also doing and my wife has a first floor with some rather astounding furniture! (Our son is really cool with it!)

What I would give to have a big, empty basement to call my own! I'd have a dedicated theater I could operate at will with a booth and some really great Cinema Décor!

(...and maybe some trains!)

[Greg May]

Dedicated space for me is also somewhat of an issue. I do have a dedicated Film Workspace though. Two larger shelves to hold 16mm film and equipment. Another shelf for S8, and a rolling cart for digital projection and film. There is a staircase in my finished attic office where this all is. the staircase going back down has a small screen above the doorway, maybe 45 inches.

It is good enough for myself to clean, review, and watch things myself, but if there is a crowd it does not work. If others want to watch, I will either bring a screen into the living room and project from the dining room table, or I will project outside weather permitting.

[Steve Lee]

I think the problem with the world that we live in, is that we are constantly having something rammed down our throats wherever we look. We are told that our lives are not complete without whatever they are trying to flog us, and it's all set in a fake world. Not reality.

These publications being either online or printed form are all in cloud cuckoo land. On average the size of the room that they tell you that you should set aside for your "Home Cinema", half of the world's population doesn't have as there entire living space. Let alone a dedicated "Home Cinema".
Even if you were to install what they are telling to purchase, this would cost more than the value of the average house. To then be told a year later that what you have, has been superseded and is now redundant.

I know what I have in my home I am very lucky to have, but it didn't come without blood sweat and tears, it's not perfect by any means, but it works for me. To have fixed screen is not a problem, as this doubles as our television and is used on a daily basis. If this had been a pulldown or motorised screen, it would be going up and down more times than a fiddler's elbow within a day.
To have a projection booth is a luxury. To be able to shut the doors between you and the projector so you can cancel out the sound of the machine is nice. But I have found when I do run a film, I sit there on edge hoping that nothing goes wrong with the print. It rather takes the enjoyment out of it.
I have had several people ask me why I haven't fitted cinema seats in the room, as it would allow for more people. When I explain this is my home not the ODEON, and this room has to be a living room as well, they look at me as if I was mad.
The thought of sitting bolt upright in a cinema seat watching the TV every night is not for me.
Unless you are living in billionaires row, I think whatever space you create for screening films, has to work for you and those around you.

[Brian Fretwell]

Originally super-cinemas had conditions more comfortable and luxurious than at home to lure you in and I think "premium seating" in some now has the same ethos. You don't want to make your home less confortable and flexible.

[Steve Klare]

-actually there is something else which is primary going on here: throw!

I may gripe about having to share space with...well...everything else that goes on in the house up on the main level, but there I have the greatest throw that this house has to offer. If you take the unobstructed distance available between the screen and the back of the house, it totals something like 35 feet. Often, I don't need all of this: where zoom lenses are used, I can put the machine about 20 feet back and dial it in. It's where I'm using prime lenses I run into limitations. For example, I have a second screen downstairs in a room with a 16 foot throw. With a 1.5 inch lens and 16mm, I get a picture less than 3 feet diagonal on a 5 foot diagonal screen. I really could make good use of extra throw distance, but I don't have it there. Upstairs I set the same machine on a stand wherever I need to and fill roughly 8 foot diagonal without any trouble.

-so the available wall space for a really gargantuan screen will come to nothing without the throw distance needed to fill it in the first place.

[Steve Lee]

I totally agree with you Steve. The biggest challenge I found was trying to accommodate both super 8 and 16mm as well as digital 16-9 and digital scope, with all projectors in their fixed positions.
The room is 12m X 6m (40 X 20 ft) with the screen being 5m ( 16 ft) wide when in 2.35:1 scope.
The first problem was finding the exact position for the dlp projector, so that it could be used for television in 16-9 with the picture hitting the top and bottom masking, and then by using the zoom the letterboxed scope image would fill the entire 2.35:1 screen.
This does mean that I end up showing the top and bottom black bars onto the ceiling and floor.
Both my super 8 and 16mm share the rear projection room. It was fortunate the standard zoom lens on my Beaulieu 708 fills the top and bottom masking perfectly from this distance.
The big problem came with the 16mm, as I needed a 27mm prime lens that would fit the lens barrel on my projector, to do the job perfectly. At the time all I could find was a 25mm and a 30mm.
I used the 25mm for several years but this used to drive me mad, as the picture just don't quite fit the masking. It got to the point where I was going to chop off the front section of the projectors base plate with an angle grinder, so it was possible to move the machine 30cm closer to the wall.
When one day by chance at a boot fair I picked up a box of old lenses for next to nothing, and in it was a 27mm 1.2 Taylor Hobson prime lens. Problem solved, but it did take about seven years to find the solution.