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Enhancing Your Home Theater Experience

Find out how interior-design elements can improve your home theater experience.

From "Home Theater"
episode DHTW-103

(Continued from page 1)

Q: Mark, you've gone through so much trouble to keep the sound in the [DIY project] home theater and not leak to the rest of the house, then the homeowner has gone and put in a pocket door, which really leaks sound. So how do you combat that?

A: The pocket doors do let a lot of sound leak, but the homeowner wanted a grand entrance into the home theater--and in this case that's okay because the only thing outside the room are some equipment racks and a stairwell leading upstairs where there's a door at the top of the steps. And at that door we installed some special sound-isolation material--basically a weather-stripping gadget (figure D) that goes on the bottom of the door--and it costs under $100.

What this material does is when the door closes it triggers off the door sill and drops a small seal at the bottom (figure E) that helps isolate the sound. The other three sides of the door were also treated with a weather-stripping type material that keeps the sound from getting through any of the cracks.

Q: That leaves the garage door. Was anything special done to prevent sound leakage there?

A: Yes--an exterior-grade door with weather stripping all around it with a threshold at the bottom was used.

Note: Mark recommends using an exterior-grade door even for an interior door leading into your home theater to get good sound isolation.

Figure D

Figure E

Figure F

Figure G

Furniture for Your Home Theater

When it comes to furniture for your home theater you can spend lots of money for high-quality cabinets to house your gear, but if you're on a budget, equipment cabinets don't have to be made of expensive wood or have a fine finish.

For the DIY project home theater a simple plywood cabinet was built for under the screen to house the subwoofers--and they were painted black. When the subs are in place a hinged door frame covered with acoustic fabric will be added (figure F), and this will allow sound to pass through.

The receiver, DVD player and other gear will be housed in metal racks just outside the pocket doors. It's a few steps away, but by being in another room, it cuts down on acoustic interference from cooling fans and other sounds from the equipment.

For the media storage plywood cabinets were built, and they were placed in the back of the room, out of sight from the viewing positions (figure G). The cabinets also double as acoustic absorbers for sound waves bouncing around the back of the room.

In the final segment take a tour of Boston Red Sox Curtis Leskanic's unique home theater. You'll see a special technique on the ceiling that creates awesome sound in the room.

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