Imagine walking into a room with mirrors on the walls, floor and ceiling. Your eyes would be immediately confused and you would become disoriented. That is exactly what happens when you listen to audio in a room where the walls are bare and smooth. It is virtually impossible to reproduce true movie sound in a room that echos, and you can test your room by clapping your hands. If you can hear an echo, you have what is called a “live” room; a “dead” room is exactly the opposite… there aren’t any echoes. You want to aim for something in the middle.
There is a saying that I learned while building my theater: Great speakers will sound terrible in the acoustically untreated room, and mediocre speakers will sound great in the acoustically treated room.
Next time you walk into the local movie theater, pay attention to your surroundings before the movie starts. You will notice a few interesting things:
- The walls are not bare, they are treated with acoustic material. You may see and feel fabric, but there’s some sort of foam underneath that absorbs sound so it doesn’t reflect.
- The sidewalls are usually not parallel to each other, they are closer at the front of the theater and farther apart at the back. This lets sound roll along the walls from the front to the back without creating reflections.
- The ceiling usually has some sort acoustic architecture on it, whether it be a large one piece structure, or smaller blocks of acoustic material.
- The floor is slanted upwards and there are surround speakers all along the sidewalls, so that every person has the same surround sound experience.
- The walls at the back of the theater (whether there are exists there or not) are also covered in fabric to control sound reflections.
- The seats are comfortable, but the backs usually do to go all the way up to your head. Anything covering the back of your head will block some of the surround effects that you should be experiencing. The seats are also not super comfortable, because if they are, you will fall asleep.
So there are some rules that you should follow when you are thinking about your home theater layout:
- If you can, avoid bare walls that are parallel to each other. Sound will bounce back and forth between the two walls. If you have no choice but to have parallel walls, you are going to treat the walls with some sort of acoustic panels.
- The front half of your theater walls should absorb sound.
- The back half of your theater walls should reflect sound.
- The back wall of your theater should disperse sound.
- Your floor should be some sort of wall to wall carpeting with carpet padding underneath.
- The ceiling of your theater should absorb sound.
Taking into account how the professionals build an actual theater, you can use the same principles when you build yours.
About The Author:
Frank Fazio has been constructing home theaters for 15 years and has experience with many different types of setups, from the simple to the more complex dedicated theater. He is the founder of the Home Theater Secrets Answered website and continues to write articles to document his experiences for others to enjoy. As an example of how information sharing is helping others on the site, check out Home Theatre, Video, Audio, Speakers
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