We incorporated a Home Theater room into the design of an addition that we were building onto our house.
Addition was going to serve as a showroom for home automation and basic CI concepts for my clients.
While we were in the drywall stage, housing market crashed, and that hit us hard.
The addition was eventually finished (floors, walls, appliances), and we got our certificate of occupancy.
The Home Theater is the only room that while drywalled, and painted, never received any floor (bare concrete) or wall treatment (bare drywall, no panels, no columns, etc.

I would like to see if anyone here does simple home theater design, acoustical analysis, etc., and can help me figure out what's needed to get this room to the best state that I can, with a blue collar worker's salary. I would like to stay under $5,000 for floor/wall/ceiling trim-out, with equipment as a separate budget.

I'm concerned that this project may be best served by DIY community such as AVS, and if so, I'm OK with it.

Flame away if you must, I can take it.

My H.T. is roughly 17'x26.
Three levels (2 levels are sunken at 1' each). Ceiling is 10' at back and 12' at display wall.
I'll provide much more details if there is interest in helping me out, or we'll take it offline.

Hire a pro!
Just kidding, couldn't resist :)
Take some before / after pics would like to see them

Mario,
you can get things going with that budget. Don't go to the dark-side over there at AVS. Stay with the pro's.
PM your email address and I will try to find you some room mode calculators from the web.

If I were you I would contact Gerry Lemay from HAA/ Quest Acoustical Interiors.

Mario,

Longshot hit the nail on the head. AVS has may opinions but only a scattered few with any real knowledge of acoustics. I see bad advice given there all the time and it seems that often the people that post the most are the biggest offenders. So unless you know the players I would avoid AVS.

Gerry is also an excellent suggestion for pro advice he would be by number one choice.

AVS does have a reasonably priced service for layouts which few on the forum would ever use.
[Link: avscience.com]

Auralex offers various services for layouts and one is free. Of course it only specs their products so sometimes there are better solutions. But, it doesn't hurt to give the free one a try.
[Link: auralex.com]

Or maybe it is time to take an HAA level I and II class and learn how to do a lot of this yourself:-)

Personally, I would look for help wherever I could get it, both here and at AVS.

AVS isn't bad in the dedicated home theater section. Some of the people over there spend quite a lot of time and research before even starting a project. Although they are probably not as good as the top pros many do a better job than most of the mom and pop shops around.

There are also some experts on there (Rives, Ethan Winer, Dennis Erskine, Bryan Pape, etc.) who are willing to give out free specific advise, though I doubt that they would design a room for you for free.

CJ

Just hire a pro. All jokes aside the cost for an initial analysis is roughly $1K. Speak with Gerry and build a relationship. Rives Audio is a bit more but I hear that are great. I have worked with others and the room you have seems to be easy enough that you don't have to layout that much cash to get going. Basic analysis will show all reflections and the best location for seating and viewing. That is more than every room I walk into.

The reason I'd lean on Gerry is he owns Quest and can help you with the paneling as needed.

CJ,

I agree AVS has some experts on there willing to help but there is just a greater number of people without significant knowledge or experience that are posting. And like I said if you don't know the players you can easily be directed down the wrong path. It is a good resource at times but you have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you are on it frequently you will learn who is giving good advice and who is not. Even among the names you mentioned there are some not respected amongst the others you named.

I am not saying don't use AVS but be cautious of it. Especially when you have the budget to get some pro advice, for a DIY on a more limited budget that might be a different story.

Thanks guys.
Jon, I'll be giving Gerry a call and see if we can get something going.

I agree, there are a bunch of people over at AVS that are building some top notch theater rooms, but the number of people there that don't know what a speaker looks like is ...

It's about $600 to use Erskine's service. Provides very detailed plans, and I've read that his firm has good customer service.

design is not hard, and in the end it depends what you are looking for but it can easily be done from far away. For acoustical analysis, it gets more complicated. like others said, there are "calculators" out there, but the reality is that a room is not a simple box, like you said, you will have three levels, you will most likely have furniture and speakers will be in a specific place and a direction...... all of these facts make the calculators relatively useless, because they will all effect sound and so any real analysis will require a visit.

For the rest, it is relatively simple. Carpeting tends to be relatively cheap and is none reflective (light or acoustic) and less annoying if someone is walking. As for colours, darker, more neutral and flatter will affect the image less (since light bounces all over the place and some will bounce back on screen off of the walls). These are the basic rules for decoration

I have some calculation software from a friend that's THX and ISF certified. Email me.

Seeing as how sheetrock is up already... If i only had $5k to spend i would dynamat the whole room right over the drywall and have fabric installed on all of the walls and carpeting on the floors. Use a solid door (if the room has a door) and get an automatic seal kit for the door.

This will at least keep the sound from escaping into the rest of the house and should easily fit within the $5000k budget. Hopefully your gear & calibration will work some extra magic.

Black Black Black. Black walls black floors black chairs black everything. Blow them away with picture quality then hand them a brochure with decor options. The black may not inspire them but it will make the projector/screen look its best.

Get an awesome subwoofer. When it "hits" the clients will feel it and look at each other smiling. It happens every single time we demo a theater. These are my favorites.

[Link: jlaudio.com]

[Link: danleysoundlabs.com]

If you are going to do sound isolation you will get better results from another layer of drywall and greenglue. Dynamat does not have enough mass to stop low frequencies and its damping is minimal. Dynanil is mass loaded vinyl which will add mass. Both are good products but better results can be had for less.

If you are doing sound isolation do NOT use the STC numbers as a guide for products. You have to look at the transmission loss data. STC is and average of 16 frequencies from 125hz to 4000hz. It is easy to block the higher frequencies so you can get an inflated STC number and not have good bass isolation. Plus it doesn't even factor subwoofer frequencies. STC was designed to keep conversations between adjacent areas from being heard easily not for subwoofers and HT.

another name I would recommend is Ted White from the www.soundproofingcompany.com. There is a lot of good information on his site. I would give him a call if you are going to do sound isolation and he'll give you advice for your situation. He is also a regular contributor on AVS.

Here are some recent posts on AVS by Dennis Erskine that may help.

Post #2 in case it doesn't link correctly.
[Link: avsforum.com]

Post #157 in case it doesn't link correctly.
[Link: avsforum.com]

Guys, thanks for your input.
Just for the record, my Home Theater is in a single story part of the house, on a concrete slab, away from bedrooms, on a quiet street. I'm not concerned with sound egress or ingress. My main concern is to make the room the best it can be with the limited funds that we might be able to scrape here and there.

This will not be an H.T. demo room in a typical sense.
This room is used by my family to enjoy a movie and an occasional game.
If a client with $10-20K wants to see it, that's fine.
If I land a big fish; well, I'll get design, construction, etc outsourced to the real pros.

Mac, I like your ideas for the sub. BTW, please let me know when you're going to donate one of those to me so I can be home to help out the delivery guy :-)
They do look as impressive as does the price.