Theater games room. Thoughts?

[benyl]

We were just going to have an open basement with a single den due to WFH that my company is embracing. I thought it silly not to take advantage of at least framing out and finishing the walls while the contractors are on site. I am not planning on anything fancy, probably just a regular 3 seat couch in the middle, no need for a second row or riser. Maybe down the road when budget allows.

I've asked my builder to frame in a room that looks like the following:



The ceiling will be just short of 9'. We added 2" of foam under the slab for insulation so we will end up at 8' 10.5".

The AV room is intended to be undeveloped space to be able to house the necessities. May or may not do in wall speakers at the front, but wanted to leave space for them.

Given the size of the room, would you wire for 7.1.4 or 7.1.6 or any other variation? We have floor trusses and as such, access to add ceiling speakers will be easy from the AV room. The outside frost walls, not so much.

Since I am not an audiophile, I was thinking to just go with Monoprice CL2 rated 12 or 14 AWG wiring. Seems like a good compromise of price and performance. Are their in-wall and in-ceiling speakers good?

I have an old 5.1 setup that comprises of B&W XTC and XT2 for the front and M1s for the rear that I might redeploy for this purpose.

Should I resize the room?

[Mitsu3000gt]

5.1.4 or 7.1.4 Atmos would be a good choice for that size of room, and especially if you are likely going to stick with one row of seating. Going above 5.1.4 starts to gets really expensive on the receiver/amp side of things for good quality components. I run 5.1.4 in a slightly larger area and it's more than enough with plenty of separation.

In-ceiling is the best way to do Atmos, so you're on the right track there.

The wiring doesn't matter as long as it's a suitable gauge and code complaint obviously. Audiophiles can't reliably tell the difference between ultra expensive silver speaker wire and a coat hanger in blind testing, so no worries there. Monoprice or PrimeCables are good sources.

I think your B&W fronts & center would work perfectly fine, then just add surrounds and Atmos height channels both in the ceiling. #1 mistake people make is buying way too weak of a sub, so just buy a good sub and you will likely be completely satisfied with those B&W Bookshelves for movies and whatnot. You can re-use your M1's for the rear if you don't mind wall brackets or speaker stands, but you can do it all in the ceiling if you prefer a clean look.

For your in-ceiling speakers, the monoprice ones are OK but these are the best bang for the buck I have found: https://www.paradigm.com/en/in-ceili.../ci-home-h65-r You can get them for ~$175 CAD/ea. which isn't far off from the fancier monoprice speakers after exchange/shipping. You'd probably be happy with any decent in-ceiling speaker though as for the most part they just play environmental sounds, but they do more work these days than they did pre-Atmos.

Room size is entirely up to you - the only thing I would keep an eye on is your distance from the couch to the TV. If you aren't doing a proper projector setup, most people sit WAY too far from their TV's for how small they are.

Last but not least, proper room correction and sub correction is going to make a much more noticeable difference than buying bigger/better speakers, so I suspect you will be perfectly happy sticking with your existing speakers for front LCR channels. The sub and center channel do the vast majority of the work in most movies, especially if you don't have big tower speakers.

Also, if you're paying someone to do the wiring, install, etc. I would suggest getting a real HT company to do it rather than the builder's electrician.

[cet]

I'm in the early sages of planning a theater for my new place. The finished dimensions will be close to yours (17'9"x12'7"x8') I'll have a sectional for the main seating and then probably a bar at the back incase I need some more for whatever reason. It won't be huge by any means but will be cozy enough for 4 or 5. You won't need more than 6 atmos speakers so 7.x.4 would be plenty. There's a theoretical golden ratio for rooms which is supposed to give you the best sound. Height x 1.28 gives you the width, and Height x 1.54 gives you the length. You're not too far off with the dimensions you have

I'd start by figuring out what you want the room to be. Is an enclosed room with surround and a TV good enough or do you want a fully soundproofed room that will rival Cineplex? How important is sound isolation? TV or projector?

Once you get an idea of what you want from the room you can start looking at ideal placements of couch, TV/screen, speakers etc.

[killramos]

Soundproofing a room sounds massively overrated to me.

[cyra1ax]

Atmos placement PDF is here: https://www.dolby.com/siteassets/tec...21318_r3.1.pdf

Also wanted to add that Infinite Cables out of Ontario is a great place for speaker/networking wiring. A little bit cheaper than Primecables I think and there's more selection. Also the speaker wire they sell has FT4(Canadian) rating on the jacket as opposed to the Primecables one which only has the American CMR rating on it. Shouldn't be a problem unless you get a super picky inspector(like I had).

[bjstare]

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Soundproofing a room sounds massively overrated to me.

Not only is it overrated, it's very difficult. My dad did this to their media room, and it was a huge amount of work (and I assume money) to acoustiblok all walls and ceiling of a ~25x14x10 basement room... it was done well, but sound still leaks out. Not worth it, IMO.


Also RE: OP - I'd have a tendency to reduce the room depth and add a bit to the AV space, even if only 6". 3' is not very much if you want to put equipment, let alone in-wall speakers in there. You'll need to hire a dwarf to work on anything back there once it's got stuff in it.

[mr2mike]

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Soundproofing a room sounds massively overrated to me.

Basically only matters to the people not in the soundproofing room.

[killramos]

Definitely overrated then.

[ThePenIsMightier]

Can't have cost that much for ExtraSlow to soundproof his "Art Room"...