Dedicated Home Theater/Listening Room Suggestions

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

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?

Actually that isn't true. He does both and he does both well. The differences are not a huge deal to accomodate. A well versed acoustical engineer can do both with the knowledge they have, the difference will mostly be in room layout (seating position, speaker positions, screen positions, etc, etc), level of sound absorption (liveness of the room), room shape/dimensions (if they can be changed), among other tangential issues. All it requires, if you are already an acoustical engineer, is the information on the current standards for home theater design and the ability to be able to apply acoustical engineering principles to the room in a way that achieves those standards. I know that Rives has those abilities, because I have seen his Home theater work first hand... (You can also go to the Rives Audio website and see all the papers they have written, as well as all of the workshops they oversee on these topics as proof of their background in this area!)

I had to choose whether I wanted my room optimized for two channel listening or for surround. I chose two channel. I have seen schematics of his pure Home Theater work and it is just as good as his two channel work that I have seen floating around on these and other fora. I have also been in someone's Home Theater room in the town next door to mine that he designed. This person's room was designed exclusively for Home Theater, not surround music or two channel music. The results are different, and the design is different (and from my research point of view, his decisions in the design are logical/rational and fit the protocols of professional theater design standards).

In particular, even though my room was designed for two channel music optmized listening, he followed certain MPAA protocols in the layout of my seating position and the projection screen (size and seating angle wise), as well as the correct protocols for speaker layout (as far as was possible given my room limitations - they are laid out at the correct angles and I have to adjust for their distances from the seating position in my surround processor due to the irregular shape of the room I could use in my house). He even made a note on my concept drawings that my choice of setup was good for two channel sound, but not so good for surround sound. That was the choice I made when I originally asked him to design the room for the best two channel sound possible, knowng that I would intentionally use digital correction technology with the surround sound to compensate for that choice.

Here is a link to the person's home theater construction thread whom I referred to above: http://archive2.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=673957

My point is, make sure you are correct before you post something that isn't factual like the above quote, because you are incorrect.