HT in new house??

Hey guys. We are just waiting on appraisals to come in and then we will be moving into our new house- hopefully. This house has a pretty large family room although it is a little narrow ( See link for photos labled 'Family Room').The decor is the current home owner's :p

I would like to throw some dry wall up and put in french doors in the middle to make a separate room for a dedicated HT. Does it look too narrow or would it work? The ceiling is just wood beams also. Not sure how that would be for HT.
Future HT?
What do you guys think?
TIA

The room doesn't look too narrow - my old house had a living room that was 11'x19', and we had the system set up in there pretty successfully. I'm going to be a troublemaker and answer a question with more questions, though. Do you have any dimensions on the room as it is now? How much seating do you need? How sensitive is your display to ambient light, and are you amenable to some window treatment that could provide ambient light control during the day?

I am thinking only seating for four. Two in the front and two in the back. As far as ambient light I would want it dark . My display is bright but the darker the room the better. The pics don't show it but there is also a window open from the kitchen to half of that room so I would probably have to do it on the end that the current owner has his TV set up. I forgot about that. Or close out the window. I actually don't have dimensions.

I could also build out half of the two car garage which lines up with the living room and just connect the rooms with double doors. I have a friend who could build it out inexpensively but I just am worried about hurting the resale value by doing that.

Looks like your front speakers are going to be stuck in the corners of the room . Not an ideal position for them but if that is all you can do...well then you just have to deal with it .

Gonk is right the windows are going to let in a lot of light . I am familar with the type of DLP (Samsung) you are using . It should not be too much of a problem so long as the sunlight is not directly on the screen .
The windows could pose a second problem with deep bass and vibrate at certain freq's . But the re are plenty of treatments you could use to tame the windows .
I would be most concerned about where you plan to place the back wall in order to cut the room in half . Avoid a square shape at all cost . A cubeshaped room offers the worst room acoustics possible . Go for more of a shoe box shape when building the rear wall . Make sure all dimensions width, height and length are are different and not multiples of each other . Looks like from the photo that the room is obviously wider than it is tall so you are good there . About 1 and half times the width is a good starting point for the length . The height your pretty much stuck with . Just remeber shoe box .
Gonk is right dimension here would be useful .
Also there are several online room calcs which can tell you roughly if the dimension you plug into it are favorable or not . I will try and find one for you .

Also, if you are doing 7.1 the "center" rear surrounds can be an issue. They tend to be in your ear.. You may want to go 6.1 or 5.1 in that case..

Here is one of the free calcs .

Will try to find some others

http://softwaredesign.com/room_dimensions_calculator.xls

Sorry Try this link instead . same calc you just need to download it first .

http://www.mcsquared.com/metricmodes.htm

Here is another that will help give an idea if the dimensions are favorable or not .

You need to download first . Only takes a few seconds .

www.tmlaboratories.com/room_dimensions_calculator.xls

Alright this is the last time I am trying this link .

http://www.tmlaboratories.com/room_dimensions_calculator.xls

Thanks guys. E'pin, the first link worked. I could not get the others to though. What about the wood beamed ceiling? I am sure I can do some window treatments to block out light but I can't live without my 7.1.

Yeah I know . Sorry about that . The others were better for what you were looking to do than the one that works . the home site for the calcs is Alpha Certification . If you are really interested try a search .

As for the ceiling it should act a lot like a diffuser for high freqs . not necessarily a bad thing .

It is really difficult to say for certain what effect the beams will have on the low end . It could be positive or negative . The beams could create nulls or peaks in the low end . It really would be determined by your listening position which effect they would have .

Generally, beams and the like tend to help lower end because of standing wave issues. The rule of thumb is, the more you can breakup standing wave by having irregular patterns in the room, the smaller the standing waves will be anywhere in the room.

If you ever look at a picture of an a-chamber, the walls have hundreds of opposing shapes to break up sound waves.

Think of dropping a large rock in a calm pool at one end.. A large wave will form and bounce off the opposing end of the pool.. If you were to put a number of obstructions at random points in the pool, no waves of any size will reach the other end. Its the same with sound.

Furniture helps too...

So the beams are a good thing?

Well beams by themselves? Maybe, but certainly adding furniture, carpet, etc, all contribute to sound absorbsion and breaking up standing waves.

Picture a 20hz note, which travels something like 55ft per second, hitting a number of beams and partially breaking up and reflecting sound. Some of which get absorbed into couch you are sitting on.

Now picture and empty cement room with nothing in it. The empty room would sound boomy, because that note traveling at 55ft per second would hit the back wall of your 20ft theater room unobstructed, bounce off the front wall reaching your ears twice in less than a second..

Also, the waves would crash into each other causing standing waves or cancellation of sound. Depending were you sit, this can be bad..

If you were in a room with no wall or infinite sound aborbsion you would get the true image of what came from your speakers..

Most people do not have theater rooms like this..

i could be wrong but i thought a 20hz note was like 56 feet long and within that wave the air particals move up and down 20 times per second(cps or hz),never heard of a 20 hz note MOVING 55 ft/sec.
i just read something about this,i'm gonna try to find it again to see if i'm mistaken.

Sound travels at 1130 ft per second . That is how you obtain the first axial in a room by adding the width, height or length by itself . Then divide 1130 by that number giving you your first primary axial . For example a room 20 feet long would give you 20 + 20 = 40, 1130 div by 40 = 28.25 hz wave . This is the freq. of the first bass wave to fit perfectly between two walls in a room 20 ft long .

Trikos knows this . I think he is just trying to simplify things .

Wingnut, I don't know if the beams are going to help or hurt your situation . Trikos is right anything that helps to bust up standing waves is a good thing . But I wonder where they are going to reflect the waves too . That we cannot say with any certaintity . At any rate I doubt that you are going to remove them so again it looks like it is something that you will just have to make the best of .
I for one feel that you could probably get a very true to real sound in this area if you wanted too .

ok,thanks for the lesson.never have been THAT into it,guess if i had stayed in electricity and electronics instead of getting into autos(20 years ago) i would have known that!

Painttoad, sorry to rag on but I didn't mean it like that .
Check out this cool little link .

http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etest/acoustics/chapter1_speed.shtml

http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/acoustics/chapter1_speed.shtml

last one did not work try here .

no,i was being serious about the lesson.i got out of theories and laws and whys and hows before i should have,they say it's never too late,but with my feeble little brain,too much new info and i would probably forget how to paint.

Painttoad, cool pics . See your a big blue fan . What kind of JL subs are those WO's, W3's or W6's ?

thanks,yeah,something about blue...

w3's with dual 6 ohm coils=====4 ohm mono
that much i do know

'nut,ain't talked in awhile,cool lookin house,don't mess with the garage,1st storm you'll wish your wheels were inside!

JL is going to be coming out with home speakers soon . I saw the proto prototypes while on a training tour in florida . Pretty cool stuff .

maybe we should start a new thread for this painttoad .

i'll start it.

Moved my computer room today, so a bit late on the responses.

E'pin is right, I was just trying to create a simple mental picture of basically what goes on.. Frankly, there is NO way to measure room modes based on calculations alone. It has to be done with a substantial amount of equipment.

I did mean to say the size in ft, not speed in ft, my bad.. and my guess may be off by a foot or two, it was just done from memory.. It still stands that a 55ft sound wave will bounce off flat hard surfaces a number of times before dissipating..

My theater room was designed with 8" thick walls of heavy insulation and when you stand in the room and talk, it is extremely dead, no reflected sound.. There are a number of absorbing an reflecting surfaces that affect the way sound acts in the room.

The best advice I can give is large flat hard surfaces are the worst... Do what you can to break up those surfaces, beams help, soft materials helps, carpet helps and if you have a projector, put in heavy curtains on the front wall. I am still working on those, I don't sow..

I got the room dimensions today 42' X 11' 10" . A little wider than the pics would have you believe , I think.

Great length! Little skinny..14 to 16 would be nice..

Whats the ceiling height?

Should be quite doable - that's a little wider than my old living room was. With your big screen and towers it'll be a bit narrow if you put the screen on a short wall (mains will be crowded into the corners). You could always make the 12' dimension the depth (with the TV on a long wall), but since you're doing 7.1 you'll want to keep the seating pulled forward from the back wall of the room.

I don't think there will be room for my entertainment furniture. I may have to work something else out there and just pull my towers a little forward. I forgot to ask ceiling height. I don't think it's any more than 8 feet though. (?)

The owner actually demoed his HT for me last night but it was really hard to say how the wood beams affected the sound because it was not my HT, ya know? And I gotta thank you guys. Because of (mostly) what I have read here you guys have helped me really put together a killer sounding system. I was actually able to help him out with his and give him some good advice on his equipment. Boy was he surprised that a woman actually knew something about HT.

Send us some pics when you get that far!

I'd forgotten about it, but this morning I stumbled back across this article by Brian Florian about setting up a small home theater. I think the size of his example system is smaller than what you're planning on, but it might still be a useful bit of reading for you if you haven't seen it previously.

My first home theater was about 11 x 16 x 9, so it can be done and it sounded pretty good. Looked similar in size to the one Gonk listed. The only complaint I had about it was the surrounds were to close. Unless you sat right in the middle of the couch. Even moving a few inches left or right of center would cause problems with imaging.

I have got both of you beat with 9ft. 10in. wide by 11ft. 2in. long and 7ft. 10in. ceilings . It was so bleeping small I actually had to use the long wall to setup the display . Afterward I decided to cut it back to using just the front three spks. as it was just to darn cramped .

Wingnut, I know you can fit that DLP in that space with your towers . It was tight but I managed with a little less than you got . The front three would have probably been o.k. if not for the depth being so close . In your case you have plenty of depth with 42 feet to play with .

Now that I think about it the room I am in now only measures 13ft. 2in. wide . The depth is about 19ft. . I get a pretty solid soound stage with both music and movie playback in this size area . I only mention this because your area is only a foot shorter in width than mine . I think you might be surprised .

I looked at at it in person yesterday and it was wider than I remember it so I believe it will work out ok. In my current set up, even though I have the room, my side surrounds are right at each end of the sofa and it sounds great. That's a lot closer than they will be in the new house .
I am just trying to decide if I am going to upgrade to another pair of LSI15s for the surrounds or the LSIfx to hang on the walls. I am going to have to get some kind of bookshelf/floorstanders for the rears unless I build out a separate room. That is looking less likely to happen. That two car garage is sure tempting though...

Get your priorities straight!, go for the garage!

I know . At these prices (insane) I doubt I will be selling the new house anytime soon but I don't want to hurt the resale value by turning the two car into a one car garage.

If you're willing to leave the gear behind if you sell, list the home theater as a feature. That wouldn't hurt the resale at all but it may attract a certain shifty sort of crowd...

Willing to leave my gear?!! Sacrilege! Ha . Actually that might not be a bad idea. What kind of shifty sorts? Outlaws?

Wingnut, how do you like your P-965 ? Do you think the Sherwood newcastle piece is as good as the 990 ?

Does the P-965 sound better than your 950 did ? I am guessing that it does .

I LOVE my Sherwood. It sounds incredible. I can't compare it to the 990 as I have not heard the 990 but I suspect the sound is similar. The 950 sounded great and was certainly a step up from my Onkyo 701 but the P-965 is in a league of it's own.

What made you want to drop more coin for the P 965 over the 990 ?

I bought the P-965 about 3 to 4 (?) months ago and it was $1150.00 brand spanking new. I had just read so many great things about it and it even came highly recommended from an Outlaw or two. Video switching is not important to me so I don't see me getting anything else for a looong time.

Thats cool wingnut looks like you got a pretty solid deal . The only reason I ask is I am on the fence as to wether or not to buy a 990 or P965 . I let my option to buy the 990 slide away when it came .

I am also curious what amps you are using ? did you go for the sherwood there also ?

There has been a lot of questions about the bass management system on the P965 and the 990 . What do you think . Is the system supplied in the 965 good enough in your estimate ?

I guess to make it simple I am leaning toward the P965 with outlaw amps like the M200's to power everything .

Just click on my link. The only thing that has changed is that I am now using a Polk LSI9 for a center channel and I now have a Denon 2910 for my DVD player.

I would go for the 990. It seems like there are a lot more features offered but with the same great sound as the Sherwood. You also get the Outlaw customer service which is outstanding. If you don't like it you can always take advantage of the 30 day trial and go with the Sherwood.

I have been told there are some bugs in the bass management on the P 965 but I didn't notice it. Sherwood is working on it for a firmware fix though so no worries.