CREATE Your Dream Small Home Theater Room!

[@sirpiffington3909]

Just fyi, 2500mm is ~8ft. That's gotta be a contender for biggest home theatre speaker ever! j/k, mental math is tricky on camera. 4inches to 10cm or 1' to 30cm might be an easier way to convert for you than 2.54cm / 25.4mm to an inch. If you ever need imperial to metric conversion, just ask a Canadian.

[@JD_Viddy]

You really should learn the difference between Euros € and Pounds £ :)

[@unknownuser0006]

Unfortunately here in Europe we have this -not that- new trend that constructors are building houses with more useless small rooms just to look good on the specs sheet that the house has that many rooms and many newer houses have 5x6 or rather 4x5m for the biggest room in the house which is funny because people move to houses to get away from the small condo rooms. Anyway, for us HT lovers it's a bummer because the only way to get ideal HT room size is to buy old house and renovate or build our own from scratch, quite challenging to find a newer house with big room. So your input in a small HT room is welcomed, thanks for sharing your experience!

[@Saturn2888]

In America, at least where I live, the tend is open concept, so its basically one huge space with little to no division between rooms.

[@CycleCalm]

If you own a home you can sometimes remove a wall. Of course, most people rent these days... Gotta made do with what you've got.

[@JulioCSolar]

I live in a townhouse. Pretty much the same situation as in Europe. Rooms are extremely tiny. I make it work because I have no choice. I'm moving out to Arkansas and I'm removing a wall to make one out of two rooms. Thankfully my wife agreed. :-)

[@Echo-jg8is]

What 🤔 most people knock the middle wall down in the UK... Instead of a 13 by 12 ft front room, people now have 26 x 12 ft rooms, this is THX specs if you have 10 feet ceilings...

[@seantong6105]

In my small room, using Bipole surrounds improved things massively, definitely work to make the room sound bigger.

[@joes3800]

I am curious about the Real Acoustix product that you mentioned. Which of the products/models provides the near-field diffusion that you mentioned? For full disclosure, I ask because I have a 14' x 24' room in which I had to set up the screen on the long wall. Like you said, I have plenty of space to the sides of the L and R main speakers and my seating is only 1'-1.5' from the back wall. I put absorption on the back wall because I thought that it was my only option. And it made a really big difference! But does Real Acoustix offer a product that can provide actual/effective diffusion if I am sitting less than 2' away from them? Please let me know because that might be game-changing for me and anyone else who has to place their seating on or very near to the back wall (or any wall!)

[@joek6207]

I’d like to see measurements. I bought 2 which is not enough to get a result but it was too pricy and I considered routing some replicas using 2” worth of MDF. But every forum I’ve been in basically says that the math simply doesn’t work for a diffuser that thin. Basically if the math did work, more people would be doing it. I’m happy to be proven wrong given than I have 2 already and would invest in getting more if there was some proof of its effectiveness against a traditional quadratic diffuser.

[@joes3800]

@@joek6207 Which model #/name is supposed to provide near-field diffusion?

[@joek6207]

@@joes3800 2” gud panel They are heave 2’x2’x2” white panels

[@gjhunter9326]

Thanks! Thanks! Hey Matthew, I have some questions regarding setting up and optimizing bass and general acoustics for medium sized home theaters (~2500 cu ft). A lot of content is available on optimization of subwoofers for seat to seat consistency mostly for multiple row seating. The consensus seems to be that 4 subs is probably optimal (Welti). Of course I am not referring to Trinnov waveforming or Dirac ART. My question is what about for a single row theater, perhaps 2-4 seats across, where you want a great MLP and reasonable consistency for the outer two positions? Are 2 subs as as effective in this scenario or are four still optimal? When placing subwoofers, should they be positioned off the floor to combat room modes or is floor positioning preferred to add some reinforcement. The second question is in regard to a general acoustic treatment approach to the front wall when using an AT screen. Is absorption, diffusion or a combination generally best? I’ve historically used absorption on the front and back walls and at the first reflection points then transitioned diffusion further into the room. I’m not sure if this is the correct approach. As always, thanks for the great info on your videos.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thank you for supporting my channel. I'll be recording a video and answering your question shortly.

[@micb3rd]

I recently put together a set-up in a small room 3m by 3.25m, the seats are 2 meters form the speakers..To get a decent bass I run front and rear subwoofers to even out the nulls in the 50hz-100hz range. I use GIK Acoustics Monster Bass Trap panels (6.5 inches thick) for broadband absorption, plus some large triangle shaped corner traps. The room sounds decent and is nicely controlled with reverberation time 250 to 300ms across the frequency range above the low bass region. I will experiment with some diffusion although i'm quiet happy with the sound considering the constrained space. BTW I am really enjoying this channel and have watched every video so far.

[@Stevo19801]

Thanks for the response. So if I go with the screen on the short wall (3m) with 2 people sitting side by side the surrounds are going to be about 1m from each Listeners head. With surrounds being so close should I raise them a few feet above ear height or set them beyond 90 degrees, at say 120 degrees so they are not so localised? Or is 90 degrees at ear height still advisable even at this short distance of 1M

[@GurvanBHC7]

You should definitely raise the side speakers. Dolby recommends that it be a little higher than the listening position. But there's no need to tilt it towards you afterwards, unless you have a speaker that doesn't have much high frequency already. In any case, the ideal home cinema curve lowers high frequencies by a few dB…

[@sandeepjohny6480]

Really good information 👌 But in small/medium size rooms is Really challenging the audio performance in this case or any room between 175 to 200 sq.ft area which is the best bed layer speaker layout 5 or 7 to achieve the maximum performance 🤔

[@stephengreen8058]

You mention diffusion on the backwall or ceiling. As a general rule where would you start with it between the 2 for the best bang for the buck?

[@tedmanasa907]

Enjoying the videos. Question: I’m curious about active systems to eliminate SBIR, improve imaging, and potentially reclaim floor space by getting more efficient and smaller speakers (on wall). Systems like Grimani Rixos. Why or why not go active versus reference passive like Perlisten? What about blending an active front stage with a passive everything else? Thanks.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Ah this will make a good video. The quick answer is that some people like to tinker. Passive lets you play with different amps. The amps are often better quality too. So if the lowest possible noise and distortion is desired, the passive systems make that easier. But you could use those same amps and a DSP platform to achieve the benefits of both. Cost would just go way up.

[@Stevo19801]

@@PoesAcoustics Thanks for the response video. So if I go with the screen on the short wall (3m) with 2 people sitting side by side the surrounds are going to be about 1m from each Listeners head. With surrounds being so close should I raise them a few feet above ear height or set them beyond 90 degrees, at say 120 degrees so they are not so localised? Or is 90 degrees at ear height still advisable even at this short distance of 1M

[@MAMDAVEM]

My recently built 7.2.4 system is in a small 5 x 3 m room and I went with all KEF in-wall speakers Ci3160RLM-THX for the fronts, Ci4100QL-THX's for the surrounds, Ci200RR-THX for the heights and Ci3160RLB-THX for the subs. I only have 2 seats so the distance to the side walls in not too short. I am about to start looking at treatment as the RT60 is about 500ms and I have a big suck-out at 45Hz which is probably a room mode which I will try and treat with an additional subwoofer. Your advice on using more diffusion is an interesting one.

[@GurvanBHC7]

Do an acoustic modelling of the room with « room map ». And then do a Helmotz Slat Bass Trap on the rear wall, tune it to the biggest problem that occur on the rear wall. The website « Acoustic modelling » will help you! (On the website « Slot width » mean the space betwenn slats, and « Slot spacing » mean from the end of a slat to the end of the other, it’s a bit confusing.

[@JulioCSolar]

Buchardt has shallow subwoofers that I heard they are pretty good.

[@northeastcorals]

Hi Matt thanks for sharing your knowledge over the years. Could you give me some tips for building a HT in a less than ideal shaped loft room (the only spare room I have), which is 5M long by 8M wide. It has a vaulted/sloped ceiling with a 2.7M high pinnacle running from front to back of the room, the 2 sloped ceilings then run down width ways left/right at 34 degrees to almost meet floor level along the left & right hand sides of the room. Unfortunately this makes the room a triangular prism shape & I know from when I was building the room with various tools it makes any sound absolutely BOOM in the tight corners! I was thinking I’ll probably need a lot of absorption in the corners running along the bottom of left & right walls & along the ceiling pinnacle? Any tips you can think of before I start the cinema build so I don’t have to re-do stuff later would be great. I already have speakers: Perlisten r5i/r4i for the 7 speaker base layer apart from the Surrounds, which are r5m’s as there are no flat walls to the left & right sides of the room to mount in-walls (only sloped ceiling). I couldn’t fit Perlisten Atmos speakers into my sloped ceiling as their depth would foul my roof structure, so instead I’ve gone with R4i’s which can just say squeeze in. Cheers!🍻

[@VIctorCarruyo]

Hey there. You could try pendant speakers for the ceiling channels.

[@northeastcorals]

@@VIctorCarruyo Are they those things that look like a pendant light? If so because of the sloped ceilings I'd probably be bashing my face off them while walking around plus they'd hang down way too low for listening positions, even with in or on ceiling speakers I'm struggling to get enough separation. Also having shelled out the money for Perlisten speakers's I'd much prefer to keep all speakers matched & I've already bought the r4i's for the ceiling. As I say I could just about get away with fitting the r4i's into the ceiling structure, or you can also buy frames to surface mount them (although I'm not sure if these have any negative affects on performance) & I believe they would only make the speaker protrude by around 120mm from the ceiling surface, which should be ok for walking under etc. 👍

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thank you for supporting my channel. I'll be recording a video and answering your question shortly.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Thank you for supporting my channel. I'll be recording a video and answering your question shortly.

[@northeastcorals]

@@PoesAcoustics Thanks Matt, that'll be awesome! 🙏🍻😁

[@MilGrip76]

98 inch depth for in-walls? Klipschorns all round then 😅... hell, Avantgard Uno horns if the budget accomodates.

[@Antibackgroundnoise]

Listening habit considerations. I also have a relatively small 13 × 11.5ft (4 × 3.5m) living room, but I'm sorry, there's just no way I could go with in-walls. Even though my room is partly treated with the couch away from its back wall, the fact my listening habits are 80/20 in favour of 2-ch stereo music. The stifle of the sound stage would be too much to bear.

[@Saturn2888]

I bought RTJ 18s for my shallow subs. Are you saying more shallow than that?

[@Saturn2888]

"I have a really small room" it's bigger than my room and many others I've seen. Mines almost 11' deep by effectively 12' wide, but the kitchen is open on the right side. Edit: 3m is not even 10'. That's tough.