Dedicated Home Theater/Listening Room Suggestions

If you are going to the trouble of running dedicated circuits , make sure that you additionally connect them to
what is called an isolated ground . This will segregate the power from the rest of your house and eliminate any noise from other items in your home .

Try to familiarize yourself enough about isolated grounds to be able to hire a professional that actually knows how to do it ! This might seem like a no brainer but few residential electricians have any experience with this circuit . Isolated grounds are usually used in commercial applications , generally computer rooms and hospitals . I went through 3 electricians before finding one that actually knew how to install this type of circuit correctly !
Google is your friend !

You can save yourself some money by running the wire yourself and paying the professional to just make the connections . And unless you live in a sandy area , they usually don't like pounding in the ground rod either !

Good luck .

A few tips:

1) Hire an expert in acoustical engineering. I used Rives (of Rives Audio) for my dedicated two channel optimized Home Theater and I recommend him heartily.

2) A great book is "The Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest. It contains everything you need to understand acoustics, but it won't give you the practical first hand experience that a degree in the subject and/or years of designing rooms in the field will give you (refer back to tip #1).

3) You can check out my AVScienceForum thread on building my own room from the Rives Audio schematics. I went with a level 2 consultation, but if you can afford to do it, I would go with the level 3. Looking back, this would have been the best choice to ensure that the utmost care was taken in all the construction. It ended up being a lot of insane work on my part to understand everything being done with the F. Alton Everest book, since I decided to General Contract my own room. I wanted to make sure everything was done according to exact specifications so that the acoustics wouldn't get botched by over-creative builders who thought they could sometimes use any material lying around to create approximations of the designs instead of using materials specifically mentioned on the schematics (or specified by myself or Rives).

4) It is better to do it right the first time, than to be unhappy with the mistakes and results that are the product of amateur/unexperienced work and design (refer to tip #1).

Just finished my dedicated room a month ago & could not be happier. Ran all dedicated lines (14 total),sup panal with an isolation transformerfor. No need for a power conditioner.
I would love to share my research & construction with you, email me & we can exchange #'s

Dedicated wiring might be theoretically nice, but I doubt it will make an audible difference unless you have an unusual problem. I'd spend my money on acoustics that will make an audible difference.

db

"If you want to do it right you need to hire an expert."
(audiooracle)

Tranlation: Hire audiooracle to to do your room for you! (lol)

" I think having a room built for you by a pro can be a con if you are not careful." (chadnilz)

Basically it comes down to relationship here. Which is another reason that anyones advice here is just "air" and "ear-candy" Basically, your simply just not going to know enough to be able to discern what's going to be superb choices and advice vs, one persons biased oppinions!

That, and you'll never absorb enough information, to be able to put it all together. That's why you should consider pro's, and then see their work! If you like, you can be assured they know what they're doing. Even go to a clients home of theirs, from references, and see what they did.
Case in point: I went to a local AVS forum "local home theater meet", and checked out one guys full-on dedicated theater room, that ended up being featured in an electronics magazine. I personally, in my professional experience, thought the system was mediocre, and had lots and lots of design flaws, acoustical issues, setup and calibration problems, response issues, equipment cohesion problems, setting problems, poorly designed seating and and speaker setup flaws, HVAC noise, etc, etc! Basically, there was so much room for improvment, even though it was a "fun room", to be enjoyed. And, it's all good. But it could have been MUCH better, done by knowledgeable people!
So, depends on what you want out of it.
Basically, don't expect to read all the Audiogon posts, AVSforum posts, or Home Theater spot exposes, and even read some acoustics articles, and think you'll have a grasp on this stuff! It takes years of experience with this stuff to know what does what, in what room, with what gear, with what speaker/seating setup, with what acoustics, room construction, settings, etc, etc, etc!

Anyway, back to your questions-I like the advice here about getting help with the wiring, from someone who knows issolation and proper wiring for your needs, yes! Look for reverences on the forums.
Also, know that a company like Rives comes from a 2 channel background, emphesises 2 channel, and constructs theaters around that. IMO, not how a multi-channel system should be constructed, and especially NOT FOR MULTIPLE SEATING SITUATIONS!!! Take even a rectrangular or slanted trapezoidial room, sit in the middle of the room, and you'll have acoustial nighmares, that no EQ or room corretion can fix! (holes especially). That said, how many seats are you planning? What's the overall acoustics of the room, and engineering plans?
Good luck