How to setup home theater in basement
Usually dark because of small windows, and out of the way of regular traffic through the home the lower level has distinct advantages built right in…. However, there are some things to be aware of when buil ding below ground level. Some of these thoughts are more obvious than others. Building or remodeling a theater below ground level has some unique considerations and safety issues to keep in mind.
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Content:
- How Much Does a Home Theater Setup Cost?
- A customizable sound system for all of your entertainment.
- Basement Home Theater Ideas
- You wish you had this home theater in your basement
- Home Theater
- How to set up a home theatre in 5 steps
- The Best Gear for Building Your Home Theater
- 15 Tips for Building the Perfect Home Theater Room
- Small Room Home Theater Ideas For Any Budget
How Much Does a Home Theater Setup Cost?
JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. Basement home theaters are the ultimate urban status symbol.
This space has everything going for it: little natural light, away from the rest of the family's activities, and likely a pristine space that gives you studs and cement to play with. Building a dedicated basement home theater will raise the potential market value of your house - just like that gourmet kitchen you put in two years ago. Consider it as more than entertainment - consider it as an investment. What do you need to think about when you're building a basement home theater?
First, how big will this room be? Determine the number of people you anticipate having over for movies most of the time. If this is about to become THE Sunday football destination, you want everyone to be comfortable, right?
In our experience, this is an excellent place to involve the 'CFO' of your house. Decide if this is going to be an intimate room for getting lost in movies, or the multi-purpose gaming, movies and music center of your house. In the industry, we call this the media room. It's just a fancy way of saying 'rec room' 30 years later! Decide this with whoever will be using the room so you can create an experience everyone will enjoy.
Upgrade to 7. Below, find the steps for the do-it-yourselfer to put together the perfect home theater. Prefer a little assistance? Our team of experts can save you time and money - they'll help you pick the right system for your room and help you avoid buying more than you need to get the experience you want. Give us a call! If possible, avoid square rooms and long narrow rectangular rooms because deep bass sound waves misbehave or "pile up" in square or extra-long rooms. They produce "standing waves," which result in areas with bass peaks where you'll hear way too much bass, and "nulls," where you'll hear virtually no deep bass.
Sometimes these areas of too much or too little bass will vary every one or two feet. Trying to fix the standing-wave problem after the fact using electronic band-aids like Equalization or an AV receiver's auto-EQ program is virtually impossible.
Instead, select a rectangular shaped room where the dimensions length, width and height are not evenly divisible by a common denominator. For example, don't choose a room 24 x 16 x 8 ft. That way, you'll minimize standing waves. How many viewers do you expect to have? Figure out how many seats and what sort of seating you'll need-- several rows of real theater-type seats or a couple of couches plus some recliners? Then choose a room that accommodates the furniture and provides a reasonable viewing distance versus your preferred screen size.
Note that the larger you make your home theater, the larger the speakers and more subwoofers you'll require, as well as having to spend more for bigger amplifiers.
Don't blow your home theater budget on a super-expensive High Definition video projector, screen and furniture, leaving little left for home theater speakers and amplification. In other words, match your high-definition visual image with a similarly high-quality soundscape from a fine home theater surround sound system, otherwise you'll only be disappointed at the jarring disconnect of combining a brilliant picture with lousy sound. Your seating distance versus screen size will determine your sense of picture clarity and detail as well as the quality of the viewing experience.
If you choose front projection, go to www. Remember that standard DVDs are only i or p and no amount of "up-conversion" will magically turn them into High Definition. They are NOT high definition, so you must have a reasonable viewing distance to get satisfying image clarity.
If you watch a lot of standard broadcast TV not HD , then figure on a seating distance at least three or four times the diagonal screen measurement for acceptable image clarity. A DLP or LCD widescreen HDTV rear-projection set with screen sizes of 43 to 60 inches diagonal can produce very bright, high-contrast images in rooms with ambient light, which may suit your lifestyle better than a front projector, which requires a totally dark room for really stunning picture clarity.
Flat-panel LCD and Plasma screens are also capable of delivering very bright images in a lighted room, but maximum screen size is limited to about 60 inches and they get expensive for screen sizes larger than 42 inches. A big theater-like widescreen image has terrific impact, but using a front projector requires a dark room and I mean totally dark or the projected image will look washed out.
Ambient room light falling on the screen will cause poor blacks and loss of shadow detail. If you are willing to arrange your room so that it can be totally darkened - not too hard in most basement home theaters - then a compact DLP or LCD front projector is affordable and convenient, with quite stunning picture quality. Within limits, a zoom lens lets you adjust the image size to suit the viewing distance and fit the screen. Using the wall for projection purposes is possible with some special and fairly expensive paints manufactured for the purpose, but a dedicated screen will usually produce much better contrast and image brightness.
Manually raised or lowered or fixed screens are significantly less costly. Avoid poured concrete floors and walls, which may cause boomy and exaggerated bass and degraded sound quality. If the floor is concrete, plan on covering it with a wood sub-floor and carpet to provide some absorbency. Likewise, cement-block walls should be covered with studs and sheetrock, drywall or wood panels.
If you consider using a normal mix of absorbent and reflective surfaces--upholstered furniture, carpet or rugs, perhaps some draperies--and some variation in wall surfaces, then you shouldn't have to budget for expensive room "treatments" or absorbers for a home theater room, unless there are unusual factors at play walls of glass, inflexible interior design rigidity.
Bookcases or similar furniture will do nicely to prevent hard, aggressive reflections that may diminish sound quality. A room that has too many hard surfaces and is too reflective may inhibit dialog clarity and cause some occasional harshness in the treble; one that is too absorbent may diminish the natural sense of spaciousness that Axiom speakers can yield when there are some natural side-wall reflections.
Speakers already have their own enclosures cabinets , and are carefully engineered to perform at their best in a freestanding location, unencumbered by special custom cabinets, nooks, custom shelving, or concealed in elaborately constructed cubbyholes behind special grilles.
This extra cabinetry will degrade and change the neutral transparent tonal balance that Axiom speakers are noted for. At the least, deep bass performance will be boomy or hollow-sounding, and the midrange and treble tonal balance may become noticeably nasal or muddy and congested.
The next time you are in a surround sound cinema, look up at the ceiling. There are no surround speakers on the ceiling. Instead, the surround speakers line each side wall of the theater plus a couple of extra surrounds on the rear wall. There are several reasons for this. The first is that Dolby and dts 5.
The effects of surround envelopment and directional cues are much more profound and convincing coming from the side. Our hearing is not as sensitive to spatial cues and sounds arriving from overhead and behind us.
If you want to duplicate the cinema experience and hear the surround soundtrack the way the director and audio engineers intended, put your surround speakers on the side and rear walls of your home cinema. Furthermore, multichannel music recordings played with surround speakers are also more convincing with side-mounted surrounds.
It's the delay of the lateral-arriving reflected sounds that tell our ears and brain the "size" of the acoustic space we are in, so placing your surround speakers to each side, above ear level about 6 feet or so off the floor will best duplicate how we hear ambience in real performance spaces. There you have it! A few simple rules to help you make your basement home theater. If you'd like a custom consultation on your home theater, call our toll-free number at and speak with one of our audio advisors.
Or e-mail us if you prefer! Lofft has been writing about hi-fi and video professionally for over 20 years, ever since his first syndicated newspaper column, "Sound Advice", began appearing weekly in The Toronto Star, Canada's largest-circulation daily newspaper.
In the late s, he became a contributing editor, columnist, and equipment reviewer at AudioScene Canada , the leading national consumer electronics magazine at the time. He also became a contributing editor to Stereo Review in New York, and an audio columnist for Music Express , a Canadian rock magazine. An audio and electronics enthusiast from childhood, Alan began building vacuum-tube hi-fi gear for his father, who was an audiophile in the s.
Lofft's passion for audio continued through college, during which time he hosted and produced "On Campus", a radio show taped on location on a portable Ampex open-reel recorder at Wilfrid Laurier University and broadcast locally in Kitchener, Ontario.
Use Code BF The store will not work correctly in the case when cookies are disabled. Home Blog Basement Home Theater. Basement Home Theater. We have everything you need to create the ultimate man-cave in your basement : Download our Checklist for Building A Basement Home Theater Read our guide to budgeting and building a dedicated home theater room Check out our top ten tips to getting a big screen tv.
Take advantage of our free home theater 'concierge' service: our non-commissioned team of experts will work with you from the studs up to create a basement home theater that's the envy of the neighborhood. Call or email today to get your own home theater expert. About the Author. We are here to help you make sure you are getting the product you need! Call us today! Login Register Registered Customers. If you have an account, sign in with your email address.
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A customizable sound system for all of your entertainment.
Home theater. A home theater system can be a fantastic addition to any home, allowing you and your friends and loved ones to enjoy your favorite shows, movies, and sporting events in comfort and style. The TV is the star of the show when it comes to setting up your home theate r. Modern TVs have slim profiles that allow for easy attachment to walls and provide stunning high-definition picture quality.
Basement Home Theater Ideas
Building a home theater room can often be the true endpoint of home remodeling. Once you have concluded the more utilitarian work of fixing windows and installing floors , it's time to reach deeper into the bank account and lavish attention on your entertainment needs. After all, who doesn't need a home movie theater room? But a home theater room is more than just a sofa and a screen. Certain requirements, like controlling outside light and the ability to cast a large enough picture, should be met in order to call this a proper home movie theater. Requirements apply both to video projectors and screens as well as to large, flat-screen TVs. A dedicated home theater room is a room solely dedicated to watching videos on a big screen.
You wish you had this home theater in your basement
Entertainment 20 April Apart from the expense, the thing holding many of us back is the overwhelming task of getting the theatre set up! The first step to setting up your home theatre is finding a place for it. A popular place is in the basement or in a hideaway downstairs.
Home Theater
Leaving the real world for a few hours, escaping to another dimension. The spacious theater carrying otherworldly travelers, providing a vessel for their journey. The mountainous screen ensuring all get a window seat to unparalleled visuals. The immersive surround sound placing everyone smack dab in the middle of it all. Especially with more affordable technology now, home theaters are not only for the rich and famous anymore. But where to begin when designing a home theater setup?
How to set up a home theatre in 5 steps
Louis, starting from bare walls and ending up with LED ceiling lights, a laser projector and a full bar. Jason decided to create a serious home theater in the basement of his home in St. Louis, Missouri. This is a picture of what the space looked like early in the construction. Planning out the room and creating architectural plans took about a month, and the construction itself took about 5 months to complete.
The Best Gear for Building Your Home Theater
Imagine capturing the cinema experience right in your own home, without the annoying cell phones ringing, the tall people sitting in-front of you, and the sticky floors. But, before you go out and buy the hardware, think about the setting. Basement home theatre solutions can be divided into three categories: Projection, Wall Mount or Entertainment Unit.
15 Tips for Building the Perfect Home Theater Room
RELATED VIDEO: Basement Home Theater - How To DIY LED Backlit Projector Screen BuildComfy brown leather seats offer prime viewing of the screen in this stylish home theater. The seats complement the room's neutral palette, which is a perfect backdrop for enjoying favorite movies with family and friends. Home theaters are no longer only an extravagance for the rich and famous. Thanks to more affordable technology, many families are enjoying a true movie theater experience without leaving home.
Small Room Home Theater Ideas For Any Budget
Everyone loves watching a great movie on a big screen with a kickass speaker system. Our AV team spends thousands of hours each year seeking the best-looking and best-sounding home theater equipment. Whether you have a dedicated theater room planned or are thinking of upgrading your weeknight living room movie night, we have recommendations covering whatever space and budget you have. This buying guide compiles everything you need in one place. The same goes for the cost of a high-performance dedicated theater compared with what home theater enthusiasts would have you believe.
So you are thinking about turning your basement into a home theater? Basements are an ideal location for a home theater as the space has some natural advantages over others in your home. For example, the floor is usually concrete so vibration from the sound is reduced especially compared to wooden flooring.
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