Best Room Shape - Home Theatre

[soloracer951]

I'm planning on gutting my basement in the future and building a proper home theater room. Because the basement will be "wide open" my layout for the home theater can pretty much be "wide open".

So what is the optimal shape? A big rectangle may be the easiest to make but is it the best for acoustics? Or would another shape be better suited? What shape would be the worst? (circle?)

Any ideas? If starting from scratch on the room design are there any "must haves"? For example, I believe plug-ins near each speaker along with speaker jacks built in the wall are "must haves".

 

[garmtz]

I'm planning on gutting my basement in the future and building a proper home theater room. Because the basement will be "wide open" my layout for the home theater can pretty much be "wide open".

So what is the optimal shape? A big rectangle may be the easiest to make but is it the best for acoustics? Or would another shape be better suited? What shape would be the worst? (circle?)

Any ideas? If starting from scratch on the room design are there any "must haves"? For example, I believe plug-ins near each speaker along with speaker jacks built in the wall are "must haves".

Rectangular is the most predictable shape. There are 'golden ratio's' for height/widt/depth. I can give you the best ratio's if you give me the range of height/widt/depth possible for the room.

It is very beneficial to use bass trapping in the corners and diffusion/absorption on the walls. I can highly recommend Auralex for this and can help you in finding out which products to use and how much.

You also might want to think about sound-proofing the room. Using floating walls/floors will help immensely in this aspect.

Just a few tips to get you going...

 

[kach22i]

Golden ratio.........lots of topic here already covered. However you could also do a Google search on the topic.

What you need to figure out is equipment/front wall - will it be the long one or short one.

Long wall - furniture can be the wide arcing stuff.

Short wall - may want to step up the rear seat tier for sight line.

I'm a big fan of the long wall, but if you only have two seats or a single center couch; the short wall layout will put your ears in the center of the room - a good thing for HT and 2-channel stereo.

 

[Munster]

There is a great discussion thread on home theatre building over at avsforum.com
"Remember the Wiring" for present AND future,ie buttshakers anyone ?