cybergrimes' basement HT

[cybergrimes]

I'm hoping starting a thread will get me motivated to work...

We bought a modular home summer of 2017, had an ICF basement constructed and placed it on top. I've got near 350 sq ft for this dedicated HT. The room is approximately 13' 7" wide by 24' 9" long/deep measuring stud to stud. There's a closet space for media shelving, it's the same width and 4' deep.

There's a few things left to clear out of the room, it kind of got used for storage, but included some pictures to get started.

Seating and screen placement:
My current v1 plan is 100" screen with two rows of seating. 3 seat couch recliners should work in this space. The first row will be 11' from the screen. Behind the first row I want to build up the floor maybe 8" to raise the 2nd row of seats. It'll have to step down again to get into the closet. I had 3 rows of electrical boxes put on the wall for sconce lighting, the first set of lights would line up with the first row of seating in case any light is needed.

Audio:
I'm looking to go with a 7.1.2 or 7.1.4 setup. Surrounds will be wall mounted and I'll position everything towards the first row of seating. I'm apprehensive on the in ceiling speakers, I think I'll need to build some kind of box to dampen them from being too noisy above. For this size room is 2 enough or do I go to 4?

Construction and acoustics:
Right now you can hear anything and everything between upstairs and downstairs, this includes the finished areas. Footfall is pretty loud too. I'm not terribly worried about this because if my wife and I are using the room then most likely nothing is going on upstairs. All the same I do want to attempt some mitigation, I was thinking single layer of drywall on furring channels with Rockwool Safe n Sound in both the walls and ceiling. Eventually the thin vinyl upstairs will be replaced with plank vinyl and maybe some kind of MLV product added in between.

There's some real weak points in the HVAC that I don't know how to address-- the air return in a row of joists connected to my daughters room and dining room above. There's an 18" vent on both sides upstairs, in the basement it's currently just covered by this foil sided cardboard material running over the metal return duct. Any thoughts here?

Wiring and equipment placement:
I plan to place equipment on the back wall with a channel going up into ceiling for the HDMI. I'm looking at projector placement around 20' deep. This will clear all the seating and joists with duct work. It looks like there are plenty of projectors that can do 100" at that distance. I also want to wire the room for both a traditional projector and possible UST at the front. If I double wire the speakers for both locations I shouldn't need any HDMI channel from front to back... just move receiver to front of room with UST if I choose to use one.

and I think that's where I'm at... a long ramble, it helped to write it all down though. I'll start with running speaker wire and then step into next steps. Any feedback if appreciated.

Thanks!