Home theater design and engineering

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

The term "home theater" itself arose when flat-panel TVs appeared, and its association with the concepts of prosperity and even luxury is very stable. But now, a few years later, it's hard to surprise anyone with a flat screen - who doesn't have it? A few years later, such a concept as the design of home theaters appeared. Moscow, followed by other large cities, began offering turnkey home cinema services to those who could afford it.

Owners of spacious houses, solid and carefully planned, strive to provide themselves and loved ones with the maximum level of comfort and accessibility to all those pleasures that modern technology allows. Designing a home theater system with equipment according to the latest achievements is the work of a highly qualified specialist who can handle many of the problems and pitfalls that exist here.

What it looks like

Whatis a modern home theater? Almost everyone, at the first mention, associates it with a spacious room, comfortable and stylish furniture, a modern sound system, a large screen and a high-quality projector. But not everything is so simple. It is not enough just to buy and place everything mentioned in a single room.

Designing a home theater system with installation involves a number of stages - from developing a project from scratch to installing and configuring equipment - both video and sound. This process includes the necessary measures for the acoustic finishing of the room and its high-quality sound insulation. In order for the money spent, sometimes quite a lot, not to be wasted, each stage must be worked out correctly.

Things to take care of

Designing a home theater consists of the most careful selection of all system components. At the same time, the acoustic parameters of the selected room, its features in terms of architecture, light, etc. must be taken into account. The project must provide for the optimal materials for cable channels and their configuration, composition and length of each of the circuits. Careful consideration should be given to the location of all food outlets, as well as cinema controls.

Do not forget that even the smallest home hall is a copy of a real "adult" cinema. Despite its small size, the requirements for it are quite professional. The difference is only in scale. Your cinema should not have fundamental differences from the publicsound and picture quality.

How to choose the right room

It must be insulated. Designing a home theater in an ordinary living room is not an option. Most often, it has an irregular shape and too large a glazing area. In addition, in the living room there are always sharp corners and several passages to other rooms. All such circumstances do not help in any way to use it for the indicated purposes.

Small details of the interior will contribute to the crushing of the sound with its distortion and spoiling the impression of the process. The linear parameters of the future cinema hall (length, width, height) should not correlate with each other in multiples, otherwise the sound waves reflected from the ceiling and walls will intersect, which, superimposed on each other, can change beyond recognition.

About soundproofing

The issue of sound insulation is also extremely important, which should also be taken into account when choosing a separate room for a cinema hall. It is especially relevant when designing a home theater in an apartment is underway. The doors to the room intended for him should be thick and close tightly and securely. Every void in the wall and between structures should be filled with materials with good soundproofing properties.

For surface treatment, there are special suspended acoustic ceilings, as well as wall panels. A simple drapery will also help. An excellent quality of sound insulation is provided by bulk floors, which are lower than the decorative cladding.there is a layer of fine gravel or sand.

What else matters

Very, very much depends on the chosen acoustics. In particular, focusing on it, they choose finishing materials and interior solutions. If the acoustics are of poor quality or chosen incorrectly, the sound of even the most expensive complex can be killed. High-quality sound refers to the system component only by 11%, the remaining 89% depend on the acoustic parameters of the room.

Thus, neglecting the proper preparation of the future cinema can become the main and most serious mistake that will nullify all your efforts.

Order a service?

It is possible to calculate the cost of the procedure for preparing the acoustics of the hall at a preliminary stage, taking into account the layout of the room, the available furniture, and the materials of building structures. The smaller the room, the more costly the acoustic treatment process will require.

Such a service as the design and installation of home theaters is now available at a professional level. The specialist will select the proposed furniture layout using a special computer program that can simulate the behavior of sound in a future cinema.

What should not be in the room

Smooth, hard-textured surfaces (like wallpapered walls) should be removed or masked. They need to be made soft and embossed. Removed from the premisesall items made of plastic, laminate, glass, metal, ceramics and tiles, the same applies to leather. It is highly desirable to finish the walls with mineral plaster or natural wood, lay thick carpets and curtains made of dense fabric. Wallpaper would also be nice to stick fabric or carpet type.

The room should not have many windows. The existing ones are curtained as tightly as possible with curtains in several layers. Under a strict ban - dishes and glass furniture. Soft sofas with a large number of pillows, fluffy long pile carpets on the floor and on the walls are welcome.

How to successfully arrange "seats"? Usually, speakers are placed on both sides of a large sofa, which, as a result, turns out to be on the line of intersection of the sound axes. Additional chairs should not be placed on the sides of it - those sitting in them will experience significant discomfort from the sound imbalance between the channels.

Designing a home theater - setting up and selecting video equipment

The theme of the importance of a competent selection of video components needs no explanation. After all, we are talking about the main component - a high-quality image on your home screen. The choice is among a huge number of TVs, projectors, plasma panels, etc. What exactly to purchase depends not only on the material possibilities, but also on the technical parameters and conditions in which the viewing will take place.

The main criterion to be taken into account when choosing a projector is the presence of the Full HD standard. Your techniquemust be capable of reproducing high-definition progressive scan images. Although plasma panels are considered universal, nothing is better than a good projector with HDMI, DV, iLINK, DVI digital inputs.

We should not forget about the component part of the cinema. This is a DVD player, receiver or amplifier with a processor. For the entire set of home cinema equipment, they play the role of a kind of computer designed to decipher the sound and image from DVDs. These devices provide high-quality operation of all acoustics, acting as a switching center.

The screen is our everything

The screen is an equally important component in the arrangement of a home hall. The involvement of the viewer in the action is directly related to the size of the image. Any movie looks better on the big screen. This, of course, depends on the room. Proportions are better to take 16: 9 (1.77: 1), but if your requirements for picture quality are high enough, you can take a smaller screen - about 75 cm wide.

The modern Multiroom complex provides the highest quality surround sound. Designing a home theater with a HI-END class equipment system allows you to make a modernized cinema hall from almost any environment. With multi-room audio installed and properly configured, you can enjoy clear sound in rooms of various types. If you install such a video with a home theater, your system will become unique and will be appreciated by true lovers of high-endcinema.

About design options

Designing a home theater in a house is possible both at the planning stage of the premises, and during new construction or major repairs. If there is no need for restructuring, one has to proceed from what is available.

The first option (when the premises are only planned) is the most reasonable and effective. The installer works together with the designer, coordinating all the nuances. The result is a neat and harmonious installation of all the necessary equipment in the room.

In this option, it is easiest to take into account many important nuances regarding the exact dimensions of the room, its volume, acoustics and architecture. You can carefully consider soundproofing and all the necessary preparation of the room.

Home theater design - installation of equipment in the finished room

If you're starting your cinema design at the stage of renovation or construction, there are also advantages, although the degree of creative freedom is already partially limited. But still, you can seriously think about the optimal placement of acoustics, laying wires, inserting video and audio sockets, installing boxes for installing the acoustics that will be arranged. In this case, you will get rid of the inevitable alterations and endless reconfigurations.

If the design of a home theater involves arranging it infinished premises - this option cannot be called the most successful, although it is most common. You have to clean the existing wiring in special boxes, it will be quite difficult to fit all the necessary components into the interior of the finished room. In this situation, the most successful choice would be to attract a serious specialist with extensive experience in such installations.

Summing up

Conclusion: designing a home theater with your own hands is a rather difficult task, not only from a technical point of view, but also from all other points of view, not to mention the material one. But sooner or later all difficulties are left behind, and on one of the beautiful days you sit down in front of a huge screen on a soft sofa and press the Play button with pleasure.

Everything! You have a new life! The feeling of owning all the richness of sounds and shades cannot be compared with anything! Fantastically beautiful landscapes, the roar of a mountain avalanche, the sound of the surf - all this is now yours. You will literally feel the magnificent sound of music and with great satisfaction remember the words of the classic that cinema is the most important of all arts for us. Now this miracle is in your home - in your own hands.