Renovating my Home Theater Room - Need your guidance

Hi,

The delivery from Anutone arrived last week. I had visited their godown and demo area earlier, which was quite impressive. They have a lot of interesting products. So now that they have redone the ceiling to my satisfaction, I was ready for the full order, and I am happy with the stuff till now.

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Hi,

To cut a long story short, here is the acoustics plan I am implementing.

A few months ago I started with a plan to create a room with significant amount of absorption using a lot of fabric on the walls and floor. Now after so many auditions, demos, trials and research, I decided to absorb the high frequencies only in the front 2/3rd of the room. Most of the rear wall is highly diffusive, while the rear half of the side walls have wood and leather finished hard board panels with synthetic fiber behind them working as diaphragmatic absorbers for the 'not so high ' frequency bands. The doors and windows are also covered with two layers of plywood with synthetic fiber separating them. The ceiling would be glass wool board with synthetic fiber behind it. I also have some pillars made of plywood and stuffed with fiber on the inside.

Here are some of the factors that influenced me:
  • Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest and Ken C. Pohlmann
  • Sound in home theaters at Bangalore with all fabric covered wall
  • ARN systems demo room sounds much better with the new diffusion focus compared to the earlier fabric and carpet approach
  • A Klipsch speaker demo at a friends place where we had to remove the carpet to get a reasonable sound
  • Aesthetic appeal
Thanks,
 
The walls and the ceiling finally got done! The contractor for the ceiling frustrated me a lot, but I found someone really sincere for putting up the fabric on the walls. Finally it all got done, and I am relieved. It all looks quite good and close to my original design now, after all the mess for months.

As per my designs posted earlier in this thread, I got black velvet like finish on the front wall and night blue on the side walls (front 2/3). This covers all the Anutone wood wool boards, as well as the door.

...and yes, the screen too got installed! I got a Grandview 10 feet wide screen, with 9'2" wide viewing area. My daughter though it was too small :), while my wife found it just enough; though she preferred the black fabric behind it.

I am working on getting the floor done now.

Kittu, thanks for the appreciation. It would not be appropriate for me to start showcasing my house on this forum, so I'll stick to the HT room :)
 
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Kittu, thanks for the appreciation. It would not be appropriate for me to start showcasing my house on this forum, so I'll stick to the HT room :)

Agreed :) Someday I will visit your place when I plan to construct one (hehe dreaming) . Bglr rates are costlier than Bay area.:rolleyes:
 
Thanks to the pointers provided by user yrk1969 on this forum, I finalized on the BenQ W6000 projector in Bangalore, with receipt and warranty from the company.

I chose this after demos for Panasonic, Epson, Optoma and Vivitek. BenQ had a huge amount of light in the cinema mode to fill my screen. It also has a more sharp, clear and vivid picture with a lot of depth.
 
I too have faced a lot of frustrations while making my mini theatre as there are several set of people involved, i had never bowed down in the difficult times, in the process work used to get delayed for long periods of time, if some of them had their way, i would have not got the results i was looking for.

In my case too i have fabric on the theatre door, which is a good concept, rarely does one hear a fabric that too on the door, i have put a strong lock so that when i am not around it is well locked.

V.

The contractor for the ceiling frustrated me a lot.

As per my designs posted earlier in this thread, I got black velvet like finish on the front wall and night blue on the side walls (front 2/3). This covers all the Anutone wood wool boards, as well as the door.
 
Even I ended up changing the hinges and lock to something more heavyweight as the door thickness had more than doubled after all the additional layers.

Railway couch hinges and Dorset latch/lock for thicker doors:
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The Dynamic HomeTheatre Door

Well even i have used dynamic hinges then the usual ones due to heavy weight of the door, if such hinges are not used for sure sooner then later the door will give way laced with in-direct play, the lock which you have used is the one even i have used. I have put rubber sea lings on door corners because of the sunlight and other issues.

So the fabric which you have used is blue color, in-fact most of the cinema halls i think use this blue color, quite a safe bet. So for the cables and related are you using some binders?

V.
 
Yes, Vinay I have used night blue fabric (darker than it appears in a flash lit picture).
the fabric on the wall behind the screen is black.

The front 2/3rd of the room has fabric. The rear 1/3rd of the room has a leather textured board with fiber behind it. The curved wall has a honey comb stricture painted in a combination of dark night blue and medium grayish blue. The floor is natural Oak finish.

I'll post some pictures.
 
Some free room acoustic stuff for people in Bangalore who can pick it up by themselves. I thought of giving it to someone who would use it, rather than selling it back to the contractor or Anutone folks. Each of these items is worth a few thousand rupees, so take it as an opportunity to improve the sound in your room.
  • One full roll of 5x25 Anutone Synth (synthetic fiber sheet)
  • Two boxed pieces of white Anutone NSS15 (2'x4' wood wool strand board)
  • 5 lengths (12' each) of Anutone Strut CC22 metal channels for installing all kinds of boards on the wall
  • Black channels for installing false ceiling grids
You can pick a few other things too:
  • About 500 audio cassettes (Mostly Hindi, some English)
  • An Onida (JVC) 4 head NTSC/PAL VCR with remote in working condition, along with about 20 video cassettes (VHS; mostly English classics and some sealed blank TDK cassettes from the US)
Everything is to be picked up in as is condition. I would give it to the first person who requests for it.
 
Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit Sharad Medhavi's Home Theater and what an experience that was!! In one word - marvelous.

Sharad has a fantastic Home theater that he has executed very well - both aesthetically and functionally. Perfection to the "T" I would say. As we can see from his thread, he has converted his car garage into a Home Theater. Sharad's Home Theater is ~18ft x 14ft X 8ft height and comfortably seats 6 to 8 people as it has two rows of seating with the second row on a riser. The seats are comfortable sofas and have been fitted with Aura BassShakers, a tactile transducer that passes on vibrations on receiving LFE. The flooring is wooden throughout the room with the ceiling being Anutone Ceiling tiles. The walls are part Anutone and part hardboard with a very nice pattern that would diffuse sound. The room's rear wall is arch shaped and Sharad has used terracota partition tiles on the rear wall and that acts as diffusor. This wall has been painted in a very pleasant blue color combo. LED lights (mostly blue) have been used very tastefully and they give the room an amazing ambience. Sharad uses a radio remote to control the lights. He has also located lights (DIY) thoughtfully (For Eg: Just above his Turntable).

Coming to the equipment, he has a high end Benq W6000 projector projecting a mesmerising image on a 120+ inch screen. The AVR is a Denon 2310(?) and it plays movies off a Panasonic Blu-ray player or a WDTV Live. Sharad has multiple huge 2 channel NAD amps driving his Monitor Audio Silver Series main speakers and surrounds. He also has a NAD amp powering the Aura BassShakers in tandem with his subwoofer. On the two channel front, Sharad had a NAD CD Player, Cassette player and a Project Debut III TT.

Sharad played some demo videos on his WDTV initially which demonstrated the superb performance of the Benq Projector. We then decided to play Casino Royale on Bluray. I enjoyed myself watching some action scenes and I must say the whole room and equipment came together to give me a breathtaking and out of the world experience. The Aura BassShakers really do a great job in ensuring we feel the Low Frequencies without having to bump up the volume. I was also able to decide on the Aura BassShakers over the ButtKicker for my HT. I had experienced Buttkicker at Torvin, Chennai ~7 years ago and was hugely impressed in spite of the demo being a very short one but the high cost was stopping me. All in all it was a marvellous experience.

Congratulation Sharad on your commendable efforts that have gone into your HT. Bravo!!. Thanks again for being a fantastic host. Please do pass on our sincere thanks to your wife and kids. My wife and son too had a great time at your place.

Sharad, I could not take pictures that day. Could you please post some pics of your completed Home Theater.
 
hi sharad

could you let us know abt the Aura bass shakers
how do v fit this and how does it work?
also the cost and if sourced locally / amazon

thanks
 
Hi Santosh,

I returned to the forum after some time and saw your post just today.
Thanks a lot for the kind words. I am glad you liked my theater. I got inspred by reading about your project.

I am amazed at the amount of detail you could capture through just discussions and observations!
A few minor corrections:
  • The room is 18ft x 16ft X 8ft
  • The AVR is Denon 2809
  • The NAD amps are C372 integrated, C370 power amps x 2 Nos
  • The Center speaker is from the MA gold series while the other speakers are from the MA Silver series
More details are available in my signature below.

I got the Aura Pro Bass Shakers from 20North, and paid Rs 8898/-.
BTW, I rewired the subwoofer and moved it to the left side wall. About 1/3rd distance from the rear. That improved the quality of the bass.

The mood of the finished theater is more difficult to capture in pictures than I had expected :) I will try to get the pictures up soon.

Thanks,
 
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