main floor or second floor

[andy10]

What is the best floor in your house to build a dedicated home theater room
that seats 10 or 12 people, main or second floor?

[BlazeMaster]

all depends on your house. You are asking too broad of a question with not enough details. It's like asking which floor should you put your bedroom in?

[andy10]

I have 2 room where i can install a dedicated home theater, one on the first floor and the other on the second floor. I am leaning towards putting it on the secon floor because it is bigger.
My concern is that the subs would cause alot of vibrations throughout the house if i put the home theater on the second floor which has a wooden floor.
So would it be better to put it on the first floor?

[aud19]

Whichever room allows for better isolation and room layout

My guess would be the larger room as it would more easily allow for things like staggered studs, double sheetrock, more insulation etc. However, you'll have to check that the structure supporting the second floor is strong enough for that extra load bearing. Also, the second floor would likely require you to tear up the subfloor to add insulation there to rduce sound transmission to the basement or through the floor to other rooms. Whereas if the basement is unfinished, it may be a lot less work and expense to retrofit all of this, plus in wall wiring etc.

Not so cut and dry eh?

[andy10]

Definately not so easy a decision.
The strength of the floor supporting the second floor was also a concern for me. As i didnt know how well it could handle all the weight of the extra studs and sheathrock for sound isolation and the 10 or 12 seats i plan to put in there.

It would take some doing to reinforce the flooring of the second. However i am more in favor of the concrete floor of the first floor since its a more stable foundation.

[aud19]

My best advice would be to contact a contractor and/or custom AV company

[Chris D]

Hi, Andy, like Jason says, it really depends. I built a very nice private theater in my bonus room on the 2nd floor, complete with an INCREDIBLE amount of building material weight. It works fine, although it is directly above my garage. (I isolated the floor anyway)

Yes, to me, the ideal situation would be to have the theater on the bottom floor (either 1st or basement) as then I have an easier time of isolating the CEILING instead of the floor.

That being said, there are many, many things that would make the decision difficult and I might go with either floor depending on many particulars about your house such as:

- Room size compared between the two options (naturally, I'd want the larger space for my theater)
- Room shape/dimensions (stuff like NOT a perfectly square room, avoid rooms with odd soffits or items protruding into the room, etc)
- What other rooms directly border the two rooms on the floor, walls, and ceiling. (i.e. it really helps to have non-essential rooms share these surfaces, such as hallways, bathrooms, attics, garages, and utility rooms, instead of having a theater right next to a bedroom)
- How the room is accessed. (i.e. do you have to weave around a living room table to get into one room... also, I find it gives a nice flair to have a "game room" of some sort right before or next to a theater)
- Other factors that would assist or hinder theater construction (i.e. pipes in the walls, easy or difficult to run additional electrical circuits from your main breaker, access to the ceiling from above like an attic which can really help wiring and such, is a room tough to get large construction materials into)
- Presence or absence of windows and/or doors in the rooms
- Ventilation options

As you can see, too many items to weigh for us to decide for you.

[andy10]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have decided to set the theater on the first floor.

What equipment do you have in your theater chris?

[Chris D]

Andy- do you mean electronic equipment, or building materials that I used for the room?

In either case, many, many to mention.

[andy10]

Hey chris i actually meant electronic equipment. You dont have to list all of them if you dont want to. However i was just wondering the type of projector and speakers you use.

[David Meek]

Andy, you can find a lot of the details on Chris' system in this thread:

Pictures Of My Equipment Rack In Progress

[Chris D]

Ah, specifically, projector is the Panasonic AE700, which is big on sale now, and also replaced by the AE900 which is selling for a good price, too. Speakers are all Klipsch, the legend series based on KLF-30 mains.