Steve's New Theatre

[Josuah]

I don't think sealing up the electrical room would be a good idea. And yeah, unless your infinite baffle went to the outside, you would have to sound-proof (a lot, since bass waves penetrate a lot) the other side of that room and decouple the wall that is acting as your baffle or else the rest of your house is shaking.

[Steve Williamson]

The electrical room will house all the servers, components, cabling etc, the only spare room is next to that under the stairs.

I am using cinemazone plasterboard and off centre spaced joists to try and soundproof the theatre well, I have chosen trapeze lighting to reduce the amount of holes in the ceiling and walls.

The riser will be 4 x 8 sheets of 1/2" marine ply, with a second layer at right angles to cover any joints screwed down. Probably use glass fibre insulation to pack the riser rather than sand.

Should I board the entire floor or leave concrete with underlay and carpet?

[JCD]

Should I board the entire floor or leave concrete with underlay and carpet?

I probably shouldn't even answer this one (I'm a paper pusher after all ), but I can't see why you'd need to board the main floor.

JCD

[Steve Williamson]

Quoting http://hometheatermag.com/bootcamp/140/index1.html

An additional benefit of a raised wood subfloor is that it absorbs some low frequencies, which is good. Otherwise, these frequencies just reflect off of the original concrete floor. A wood floor also vibrates with low frequencies, to some extent, creating a more-tactile experience. A raised floor that has at least a 3- or 4-inch air space under it will vibrate even more. This technique is used in the screening rooms at Lucasfilm and Dolby Labs. Anthony's and Russ' clients like the added low-frequency feeling as the subwoofer's bass energy transfers through the floor.

This has always stuck in my ind since reading the article several months ago.

[Josuah]

If you placed something inside the floor, like insulation, then I suspect you can get the same low-frequency benefits from the raised floor as you would from a panel trap. The panel trap I have on my back wall makes a noticeable difference. I followed Ethan Winer's design and so it is a sandwich of drywall (the real back wall), air, semi-rigid fiberglass, air, and plywood in a sealed enclosure.

There are also some rubbery things or something that people sell for acoustical decoupling of the floorboards you put down on top of the 2"x6" supports.

You should also consider what you will put inside the riser. I have my riser filled halfway with sand. This prevents sound from being a problem inside the hollow cavity and since the sand can move around it will quickly absorb a lot of acoustic and kinetic energy.

A raised floor will vibrate more due to acoustical energy. In comparison, a concrete floor will transfer kinetic energy much more easily. So how tightly coupled your speaker enclosures are to the floor will result in a different experience with the two floor types.

I have a Sony Vaio running Media Center 2005 and would love to figure out how to have it or the 360 serve all my dvd content, control the lights etc.... etc....

[Josuah]

X10 products will take care of the lights and other household things. But I'm not sure if they have something that will send discrete codes out over IR, if your home theater gear doesn't have RS232 inputs.

As for serving DVD content off your computer or XBOX 360, it is illegal for you to take a regular movie DVD and store it on your computer for that purpose.

I don't wanna serve the content to other people, other places. I wanna serve to my home theater, just like I serve my music from this one computer to all the other computers in my home.

[Steve Williamson]

There is a commercially available DVD Storeage system that is using the premise that you can store your DVD's for personal use - Same as DVD Shrink users use.

The problem is you have to convert the ifo's to a wmv file to stream to XBox extenders as they do not permit plain dvd files being streamed.

Software like HAI control for media centre and homeseer will let you control X10 and ther similar technologies from with in the MCE interface.

I think that HIA has a product that can use standard remote codes to other equipment.

[Tommy]

Check out the reviews for the BenQ PE8720 projector. When on another board I know someone else mentioned how good the BenQ customer service was in Australia. He said they came right out to the house to update the firmware on the projector.