Basement Home Cinema - ideal dimensions?

thorfun

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Hi all,

my and my family will soon, hopefully, be embarking on a new build project! we're very excited. the most exciting thing for me is that i will finally be getting my own home cinema. I've managed to persuade the architect to let me have a basement and we've decided that i will put it under the triple-bay garage (subject to planning approval of course!)

The size of the basement area is yet to be decided but if we assume that each bay is 3m x 6m then the total area would be approx 9m x 6m which could be carved up as i see fit. if i make the assumption that we will use the depth of the garage block (6m) as the length of the home cinema then I would assume that the width of the cinema should be approx 4m? to give it a rectangular shape rather than square. So that would leave a 5m x 5m (1m taken off for the corridor) room for another purpose (gym/games etc). i'm thinking something like this....

IMG_0023.JPG

My question to this community is if you had an approximate space of 9m x 6m what size would be the ideal dimensions for the cinema? how would you carve up that space to create the best home cinema experience? also, how high should the ceiling be? as it's a basement i can, theoretically, dig down deeper than a normal house ceiling height. the only constraint would be cost, of which we don't have a huge budget but i'd rather get the room size correct first and i can then fit it out with equipment later down the line when money allows rather than getting it working but at the wrong size just to get it working!

Hopefully the experts on these forums can start to fill out the details of what will be my dream cinema room. :D

thanks in advance.
 
The key question height wise is whether you wish to have an atmos setup as i believe Dobly have a recommended ceiling height.

If you take a look at the below link it goes into all sorts of details that should help you setup your ideal room layout.

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technolo...tmos-home-theater-installation-guidelines.pdf

or a condense version from THX here
Surround Sound Speaker Set Up « THX.com

In short pick a room layout/size that will allow you to get as close as possible to these two ideal lay outs
 
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Cheers for the links Lizard. Atmos is definitely on the cards. I'll read those docs you linked to. Was kinda hoping to get people's opinions on their experiences too rather than just cold hard facts! Then I could take the cold hard facts and the opinions and put them together and come up with something awesome....kinda like that car that Homer designed. [emoji6]
 
Was kinda hoping to get people's opinions on their experiences too rather than just cold hard facts! Then I could take the cold hard facts and the opinions and put them together and come up with something awesome....kinda like that car that Homer designed. [emoji6]

I get what your saying but the trouble is that there are so many variables that it's pretty much impossible for anyone to answer. For example how many rows of seats, how wide are the seats, are you going for wall or free standing speakers, what speaker configuration........ All will have an effect on room layout size.

The biggest thing though is your in a very envious position that few in the UK ever get, most of us just have to work with whatever size room we get. You could try posting in a USA forum though where you might have more luck.

If you want to keep to the UK then you would be better changing the question to something like, What mistakes did you make with your home cinema room so as hopefully I can avoid them?
 
very good points Lizard. I may try a US site, that's a very good idea and I really like the idea of the "mistakes" thread. will help me and many others not make the same ones!
thanks again.
 
I really like the idea of the "mistakes" thread. will help me and many others not make the same ones!
.

What a top idea :) you should start one. You and other's will learn loads that would be helpful, for example on my first build I put the door in the wrong place opening out on to my main right speaker :facepalm:
 
The room dimensions should be as close to the 'golden ratio' as possible, 0.6:1:1.6. This will ensure low frequency modes are evenly distributed.

Dupe...
 
The room dimensions should be as close to the 'golden ratio' as possible, 0.6:1:1.6. This will ensure low frequency modes are evenly distributed.

Dupe...
what do those ratios relate to? h:w:d?
 
Doesn't matter, as long as the ratio is used. For example if the width was 4m then the height would be 2.4m and length 6.4m.

Dupe...
 
I used this

Reprint-from-Master-Handbook-of-Acoustics-Bolt-Chart-e1338584383442-1024x846.jpg
 
Still on a learning curve here. RH Bolt wrote about room acoustics who developed the graph back in the 40's!!! , but as it was pointed out to me today, modern room treatments can make this a little redundant. Avoiding square rooms or where room width is half of room length. I'm adding some more info to my post ...
 

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