Building a new home with a dedicated theater room. looking for advice, things to avoid, etc

[Jtrboy]

I will have a 16' wide x 25' deep x 10' tall dedicated home theater room. No windows. One small closet. It will be a 1 story house.

Any advice is appreciated.........I have an appt with the electrician in a few weeks. Would like to get everything I need installed now.

Thanks !

 

[DonH57]

I would consider isolating the room from the rest of the house (and neighbors). I used Kinetics Noise Control IsoMax clips to suspend (float) walls and ceilings in my media room (basement room, concrete floor). See https://kineticsnoise.com/isomax/sound-isolation-clips.html I had the builder use double-drywall panels, glued and staggered so the seams did not align, all seams/joints caulked, and all installed on the clips to reduce noise to the rest of the house. Outlets and light boxes were backed with caulk to reduce sound through them. A minisplit HVAC unit is used so there is no ducting to the rest of the house, with baffled inlet and a quiet fan in a ceiling vent for exhaust to get airflow into and out of the room.

The door is a heavy solid-core exterior door with full weather sealing to reduce sound transmission through the door. Provides most of the benefit of a studio door at much lower cost.

For outlets, I ran 20-A lines to the front wall where all the equipment lives, and a 15 A loop around the rest with several outlets split so the top is controlled by a wall switch as you enter and bottom always on. That way I can use floor or table lamps instead of in-ceiling or overheads to reduce the number of holes in the drywall. I do have one high wall sconce for ambient lighting when we watch movies. I do wish I had run another 20-A line at the back for the rear subs but have not had any problems.

I am not a fan of in-wall wiring; it always ends up just a little off where I need it, but if you do route to a convenient place with wall panels you can plug into. That way you have short runs to speakers (or whatever) from local wall plates for a cleaner look.

Don't forget an Ethernet run or two if desired.

HTH - Don

 

[Sonnie]

That's a lot to cover really, but it sounds like Don hit on the most important parts of the wiring.

I would want to isolate the room as much as possible, as Don eluded to, but the ceiling may be an issue if you don't have the support for more weight. You can do some insulating of the wall, but the deep bass will still travel thru the ceiling and thru the attic. If you have easy enough access to the attic and can some how border wall that room and add a good bit more heavy blown insulation up there, it might help.

I suppose it might depend on how extreme you want to get with it.

Look at other builds and get ideas too.

 

[lemoncadillac]

I would run 2" PVC pipe in the walls, center of the room floors, and perhaps in the ceiling front to rear. I was always adding new things to my system over time. A way to run a new line to a port in a PVC pipe would have been nice. Access mid-way through the floor in the center of the room. Trying to future-proof a room is impossible. But you may get close. Good luck

 

[Umikuser]

Since it seems you are pretty early in the planning stage I would consider hiring an acoustician. A good one will be able to help you to make construction plans, choose cheap but effective building materials to save on cost.
A good one should also suggest to measure the room before the build to make sure issues are addressed, and after construction to verify that it all worked out as planned.

As we all know, there are a lot of overpriced and esoteric things to spend money on. An acoustician should be able to steer clear of those

Also, the best time to hire one is BEFORE construction starts, their advice tends to be a lot more expensive after the room is complete.

I did it this way myself, and the room came out really well and way under budget.

 

[DonH57]

I used Isomax clips for the ceiling of my room. They mount to the studs (or ceiling joists), rails mount to the clips, and the drywall for the ceiling mounts to the rails, same as for the walls. The builders liked the Kinetics clips because construction was basically the same as normal drywall mounting with the extra steps of mounting the clips and rails. The rails became the studs and drywall was hung "normally". Not as good as a real floating ceiling, but helped a lot (heavy footfalls from above still transmit somewhat), and was much easier to build and took away less headroom than the support system and such for a true floating ceiling.

You could save some money by doing the caulking yourself as that was labor-intensive.

I forgot to say that I also built the media room with 6" wall studs (normally 4" for interior walls) and filled walls and ceiling with Rockwool acoustic insulation. Not sure I needed 6" studs with the clip system, probably would stick with 4" if I had to do it again and gain a few inches of room back.

Here are some diagrams I worked up early in the process to show the builders what I wanted. There were ducts in the ceiling so I left a channel for them and added a suspended sub-ceiling. I could have used some spring-type isolators instead of the clips to isolate the ceiling a little better, but it would have complicated the construction process both in the ceiling and in mating to the walls, and cost more. The intermediate drywall in the ceiling was the original ceiling or I probably would have skipped it as well. Adding a second wall does not necessarily help; sometimes it makes things worse, and is always more expensive.

 

[rxescobar]

Heartily agree with getting an acoustician involved early on in the process. The other thing, I would consider would be Dynamat back boxes for the ceiling speakers so their sound is directed down into the room and not into the attic. Good luck with the room and keep us posted.

 

[SRW1000]

If you're looking for things to avoid, there's an excellent, but lengthy, thread dedicated to this at the AVS forum:

What I'd do differently next time. | AVS Forum

I built a room similar to what you're planning, and read through every post, jotting down notes as I went along. Came away a list of items that I used to work with the builder during the design and build process.