[bigjppop]

Well I never thought the day would come, but it's almost here and I finally have a little space of my own to build a little home theater in my basement.  I recently moved from a very small house in Tokyo to a slightly larger house in Berlin and the wife has given me permission to make one of the rooms in the basement into a home theater.  Budget is SUPER tight, but I'm hoping the kind souls here on AC can at least help me tame some of the larger issues.  So, the basics.

The room is basically a rectangle measuring roughly 12x15 with 7 ft ceilings.  Being an old German house, the walls are something like 15 inch think concrete.  One wall and the ceiling is covered in pine paneling and the floors are 12x12 tiles.  The room only needs to accomodate two leather recliners as far as seating.  I'm planning on setting up the room with the TV on the 15' wall because of where the door is situated but that is not set in stone.  On one of the short walls there are two glass doors (single doors, not French doors) that  go outside.

Equipment is as follows.  The TV is a 50 inch Panasonic Plasma.  The speakers are Quad L2's all the way around (22L2's up front, L2 center, and 12L2's in the room) all being driven by a Denon AVR-989.  Subwoofer is an Ascendent Audio 15" Avalanche that is currently under construction.  Source is a Sony Blu-ray player that will probably be augmented by some kind of HTPC in the near future.

I would LOVE to just be able to purchase everything I need from one of the many fantastic vendors that participate here in the circle (and hopefully finances will allow for that in the future) but money is tight right now so I have to get creative.

So some thoughts from what I've read here so far.  I'm planning on getting some kind of carpet to cover the tile floor.  I've been looking for rugs and  even something cheap from IKEA is running 300+ dollars some I thinking of just using a piece of carpet remnent from the local version of Home Depot.  I'm hoping to cover most of the floor with this.  Probably won't have any pad underneath it and I'm assuming it will cover most of the floor.  Now, the wall with the two glass doors.  They let A LOT of light in some I'm hoping to find some blackout curtains or something that can darken up the room.  I'm hoping this will also help kill some of the monster echo in there.  Should I just find curtains to cover the entire wall or just two smaller curtains to cover the doors?

Now, as for acoustic panels/traps, budget demands that I go the DIY route, at least for now.  I've searched high and low for OC 703 here and I'm pretty sure it simply doesn't exist in the consumer market.  Now, that being said, I can find 4 inch thick yellow fiberglass panels measuring roughly 2x4 but I don't know much about them.  I can also find Rockwool in the same measurements but I don't know any specs on it.  My question, is Rockwool the same the world around?  Do I need to look for some special Rockwool?  Is there something special about the OC 703 stuff or will any fiberglass insulation do?  I'm planning on simple wooden frames with 4 inch thick "something" and would like to cover them in fabric to make them somewhat OK looking.  Is there anything special I need to look for in fabric?  Thick?  Thin?  I'll probably be shopping the cheapy rack for this too.  I have no idea on how many I need or where to put them yet but just want to know what to shop for first.

As for picks/sketchs, I'll post something soon, but it turns out Google SketchUp is not as easy to master as I thought.  Anyway, I would greatly appreciate some preliminary guidance to help get me started.

Thanks in advance!

[Mag]

I use 2" acoustic dispersion panel 2x4 all along the bottom half of the room. This deadens the room significantly yet leaves the room lively enough for higher freq.. You don't have to attach them to the walls, just lean em up against the wall. They are easy to move in place when needed. If you must attach em use Velcro instead of glue to hold em in place. Glue leaves such a mess if you decide to move your audio room.

I would go with long wall placement for speakers, for nearfield listening(you'll get use to it). You don't need to have surrounds behind or to the side. Placing them in the corners works because of sound reflections. I'm concerned however you may not overcome the slap echo of the room. Hopefully acoustic panels all along the bottom of the room will do the job.

I would also consider digital room correction to help reduce the echo.

[bigjppop]

Thanks for the thoughts.  My AVR has the Audyssey stuff but I think that might be about all I can swing with digital room correction.

As for the panels that you use, do they completely cover the bottom half of the room all the way around?

Also, as a follow up question, been doing a little googling and came across some statements that said the most important thing I can do in a small room is to put some traps in the corners, preferably floor to ceiling.  I've seen a couple places recommend cutting your Rockwool/Insulation panels into triangles and stacking them floor to ceiling in the corners.  I would end up using a LOT more material and am just wondering if that's a little overkill.  Remember, budget is tight...

Also, one more follow up, just found some blackout curtains and they end up pretty much covering the entire side wall (the 12 ft wall if I set everything up along the long 15 ft wall) that has the two glass doors.  Any issues with that?

[TomW16]

Bass will build up in the corners of the room, which is why the standard recommendation is to use bass traps in the corners.  You can stradle the panels across the corner without filling it completely and that will help and not use as much fiberglass. 

Treating the room is about surface area and treating the bottom half of the room is not a bad idea but for the same surface area, you might consider treating one complete wall so that echos don't bounce freely in the top half of the room.

Tom

[bpape]

Now, as for acoustic panels/traps, budget demands that I go the DIY route, at least for now.  I've searched high and low for OC 703 here and I'm pretty sure it simply doesn't exist in the consumer market.  Now, that being said, I can find 4 inch thick yellow fiberglass panels measuring roughly 2x4 but I don't know much about them.  I can also find Rockwool in the same measurements but I don't know any specs on it.  My question, is Rockwool the same the world around?  Do I need to look for some special Rockwool?  Is there something special about the OC 703 stuff or will any fiberglass insulation do? 

If you can give a brand name and model, I'll be happy to take a look.  Either rigid fiberglass board or mineral wool can work just fine for acoustic applications depending on thickness and density.

Bryan

[bigjppop]

Thanks for the replies so far; I'll try and get a couple of pictures up to make things a little clearer.  I'll also do some research to try and get the names and manufacturers of the fiberglass and rockwool that I saw.  I appreciate the offer to look that up for me.

The idea of completely covering one wall is somewhat fascinating; maybe the back wall behind the seats?  I would have the curtains on one side wall and then panels on the back wall... what do you think?

Also, just a follow up on the carpet/rug question; should it cover as much of the floor as possible?

Thanks!

[Mag]

My audio room is half concrete walls, the other half unfinished plywood, wooden floor boards, and rafter ceiling, 11'x 25'x7'. I don't have echo in this room, but if the bass is sloppy then it sounds really boomy. With tight fast bass there is no sound problem that I can discern, and I think I lucked out on good room acoustics.

Your room on the other hand has hard reflective surfaces on the floor ceiling and walls. So its going to take a bit more effort to make it acoustically friendly.

Initially I had my stereo upstairs. I didn't know how much acoustic panels I needed or where to place them. So I covered up every wall top to bottom, and the room had this noticeable quietness if you stood in the middle of the room. The room was on the dead side, I had to crank the volume to hear detail in the music. The back wall I covered with 4" acoustic panels which is still there. Its a good room for sleeping in now because I can't hear any noise from outside the room.

So I moved the diffusion panels to the basement audio room. I went without the panels for a month or two. With the panels I could tell the music was more focused and I could hear more detail in the music. IMO it was only a marginal difference, but every tweak adds up eventually to audio bliss.

I don't think its essential for to have acoustic panels. In your case insulation hopefully will get rid of the echo.

[bpape]

In a home theater, the FRONT wall should be absorptive.  If you want to do something in the rear, that's fine, just make it a bit thicker and make sure it has a facing on it to minimize mid and high frequency absorption so you don't kill your surround field.

Bryan

[bigjppop]

All the insight so far has been great; thanks for the help.  I've been going over my room some more and am curious about corner bass traps.  I can do floor to ceiling corner traps in the front corners, no problem, but the rear corners are a little more problematic.  My surrounds are going to have to be tucked up pretty close into the rear corners and I'm not sure I'll have any room for a decent corner trap.  Should I just forget about the corner traps in the rear or maybe go for something only 10 inches across instead of the recommended 24 that I'll be using in the front corners?

Also, on Brian's comments regarding treating the front wall vs the rear wall; that's what I'll do.  Should I treat  the entire front wall or can I get away with maybe a couple of panels behind each of the front speakers?  Should they be floor to ceiling?