I wish I knew this before building my theater room

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I Wish I Knew THIS BEFORE Building My Home Theater Setup | Home Cinema
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There is a difference between knowing something and really KNOWING something. With all my years and work developing theaters for others, when it came time to build my second theater, I failed to find some of my own advice in ways that ultimately lead to minor regrets. In this video I share some of the things that, now in hindsight, I wish I appreciated more up front. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.

[@erod9088]

Nice Oblivion intro!

[@PoesAcoustics]

Hah people really loved that. It was one of the options when I had those made!

[@online_screen_name]

Looking forward to the full cinema tour

[@PoesAcoustics]

Me too! I am hopeful it will be in a functional state by the end of January. I will likely have to do the majority of diffusers and the ceiling design later.

[@coachgordonpalmer]

That’s what I did with my screen Seymour AT 2.8m x 1.4m so 2.0 ratio with 2 sets of magnetic attaching masking panels. Takes 15 secs to change aspect ratio. One of my best ideas very pleased. Masking panels are only 85mm wide.

[@geickmei]

Make the biggest 2.4/1 screen that will fit in your room and zoom up from 16:9 to make it fit the wide screen. You don't need masking. Don't use inwall speakers in the front.

[@PoesAcoustics]

Very good in wall speakers like I used provide no serious compromises. Masking is needed more than ever. The range of aspect ratios in new content is huge.

[@geickmei]

@@PoesAcoustics The content outside the screen is black. You can also paint the wall outside the screen black. But I have found no problem in an off-white, or beige, room.

[@theHyghwayman]

Brother Matthew, thank you for sharing this expensive educational experience with us. This is the best and definitely the most expensive hobby that I've been enjoying since a young boy in the 70's. My 1st stereo was a 8-track boombox and now it's an 11.2 or 7.2.4 system in a dedicated HT space of my own. We all are human and as such, mistakes happen. It's how we learn and adapt, overcome challenges. Best wishes, Hyghwayman

[@skipsaunders5974]

What about haptics ...? wire for that?

[@TheGreatTomDix]

Conduit baby, conduit!

[@user-cr4pz5yg7y]

Always use conduit. Can pull new wires for life.

[@northeastcorals]

This is why I'm making removable stretched fabric panels to build a smaller room within the actual solid bricks & mortar room. If I need to make any changes to speakers, cables, acoustic treatments etc I just open up a some panels to play around with stuff.

[@shawnperepelytz6397]

How come you went with wood strapping on the ceiling instead of resilient channel to hang the drywall? I’ve read the metal resilient channel gives double the IIC & STC rating?

[@PoesAcoustics]

Hey Shawn. Look at my earlier videos on the products I used. I went with Hushframe instead of the steel clips. The Hushframe isolator contains a resilient silicone spring built into it. The product is designed to be used with either hat channel or furring strips. Because the decoupling is 100% handled by the clip, there is no added benefit to the hat channel. If you look at the Hushframe lab data you will see that hat channel doesn’t provide any benefit with their product. What you say is true if you are using metal clips, which have no resilience. Even the resilient clips aren’t as resilient as hushframe so the hat channel helps. But with all decoupling you hit a point where it’s already maximally decoupled and you can’t get any further improvement. My ceiling has a lab STC rating that is as high as it gets in the industry.

[@kirkcunningham6146]

Good points. But here's the deal. Let's just say you did all of these things. There would be another video telling us a list of other things you wish you would of done. The point is brother, this never ends. Especially the way the hobby is now where it's evolving from a day to day, month to month and year to year basis. It gets to the point where a guy just needs to stop and enjoy what he has and be ok with what he can afford. This is an endless game as you already know...

[@PoesAcoustics]

It certainly can be. I was just making some food for thought points on things that I knew better about but didn’t do. It created some regrets now. But maybe a good next topic is stepping back and enjoying what you have or can have rather than obsessing about the next best thing. I frequently make the point that people obsess over high channel count too much. The value is almost nill. My only reason for wanting the wiring for it was related to demoing gear I sell. The bet benefit to the overall experience would be very little. Being a reviewer I get to try a lot of new gear. I think the saddest reality I get from that is how many evolutionary upgrades net almost no or even no discernible improvement. In fact the first Atmos demo I ever got, when I made them turn off the atmos speakers and have the system fold down to a 5.1 system, I honestly didn’t feel I lost anything. I was, for a while, an advocate to wait on Atmos. I eventually had some better demo experiences that convinced me of the merit but it’s still more subtle than most realize.

[@kirkcunningham6146]

@@PoesAcoustics yes, absolutely understand and I had to eventually stop because the hobby was advancing faster than I could afford it and I make pretty good money. I also own a 96 C-4 Corvette that pulls money away as well as my wife's hobbies. So needless to say, life takes over and eventually the things we want gets put on a wish list for the future. I did spend some money recently on upgraded 48Gbps HDMI cables from FIBBR. Noticed a huge difference in picture quality compared to copper. Even then, that was a few hundred bucks....

[@PoesAcoustics]

@@kirkcunningham6146 yes I totally get it. It’s also somewhat self defeating to put yourself in a never ending upgrade cycle. Is this about enjoyment or a competition.

[@kirkcunningham6146]

@@PoesAcoustics what I wish for right now is "Outlaw" Audio to come out with a new and updated pre-pro. I have the 976 you reviewed a few years ago. I'm not sure what has happened to them but they have no new products advertised or even in the pipeline. Sad because that brand was my go to for affordable quality gear. Still operating the 976 however...

[@PoesAcoustics]

@@kirkcunningham6146 ah. I know what is going on but it wouldn’t be appropriate to say. They are a serious value leader. They have some killer amplifier values. I would have to ask Peter but suspect an Atmos processor may not be soon. They are harder than past surround processors to bring to market. There is finally a cheap Chinese Atmos platform to build off of, but I’ve heard it has a lot of issues and the company has been unwilling to fix them for ODM products.

[@commanderrussels2612]

basically when he started building his room he wasn't a dealer, and now he's a dealer and getting a bunch of dealer demo and review stuff and he didn't plan on that. not really super helpful for the average person making a room but grats on the discounted stuff!

[@PoesAcoustics]

That was sort of the impetus for my needs changing. But many people deal with simile variations. In my case I have an immediate need for some changes. But I just refitted a system built ten years ago around rack powered subs. He upgraded to Perlisten subs and had to run XLR cables behind molding. He could have run that upfront. My main point, related to your dealer comment, was plan for the future. Your needs may change. Nobody had run speaker wire into their ceiling for Atmos because it wasn’t on our radar. Right now we know there are likely new consumer formats or changes to existing formats coming that will need more speakers. That means it makes sense today to run some extra wire. I ran a little extra, but not enough. That was a mistake. The other two points I made had nothing to do with being a dealer. Stoping on top of your integrators and contractors is a consumer problem. Planning your system up front and executing the plan is a standard project management approach.

[@commanderrussels2612]

@@PoesAcoustics I think to a point with the wires. I'm a big believer in running wires, but at the same time I think a bigger benefit is making wires easy to run. My space if you have to run different wires between the lights and access points it's not that hard to get a new one ran. HDMI formats change... and yeah he could have run XLR ten years ago but maybe then he'd have used Meridian stuff and needed CAT5e, or maybe he'd have run subs that use RCA and needed those instead. It's hard to really estimate everything and if you go too crazy that's a negative too. I think running some pull wires is a good idea. For your room probably a drop ceiling would have been best, realistically speaking. As far as the 4-way masking system, for most people on a reasonable budget that's a downright bad decision.. the panamorphs and all that stuff, as you know, are a huge expense and the payoff is questionable in a 16:9 native world. I mean the people saying "oh yeah just get a panamorph and a madvr and scope screens work great" are totally jus trying to sell you stuff lol. Vast majority of people your 16:9 was actually the right choice.

[@PoesAcoustics]

@@commanderrussels2612 well given that my primary services are the engineering of soundproof rooms, drop ceiling wouldn’t be a good option. The entire point of this theater is to highlight how I engineer a room for maximum isolation. For the same reason, it wasn’t possible to make it easy to run new wires. Anything that made that possible would then compromise sound isolation. I do have Smurf tube to two locations. However that’s it. So I can’t use that to run wires out to the walls and such. That is what it is. My client also has a sound isolated room. It’s why running new wires is so tricky.

[@commanderrussels2612]

@@PoesAcoustics Ah yeah, that's right the sound proofing. Well maybe some on top of the wall wire tracks would be best for your room, depending on how much say your wife has in the matter! I imagine your clients room has to meet a certain level of WAF though. Almost need a room within a room for the sound and then another room within that room for the wires and speakers lol.