Most of the information Pockytofu will find will be on the electrical and electronic aspects of the project. He seems to be looking for help on the acustical end of it.
That my friends is an entirely different can of worms. And snakes too.
He will have to control the transmition of noise into and out of the room. He will have to control the production of noise in the ventilation of the room. And worst of all he seems to be looking to control the reverbaration in the room. All of these problems have sometimes led those who are not experienced in the field to call it a black art rather than a science.
I spent 15 years as a stagehand specialising in sound and lighting then I spent 15 years at NBC-TV New York doing the same thing. In that time I worked in nearly every Broadway Theater and all of the NBC studios at 30 Rock and in Broocklign. I became intematly familiar with a number of recording studios in NY from Electric Lady (Jimi Hendrix's personal room) to the old Columbia 30th Street room (an old church that was Frank Sanatra's favorite in NY).
At NBC we put together 2 editing suites, 2 radio studios and an audio sweeting room. I also was the mixer on the experiments to decide how to do basebal in stereo and the Sarnof (spelling?) Labs HDTV presentations for NAB. I was one of the team that first put Friday Night Videos on the air and did 8 years of preproduction mixing for SNL. My first two years while I was a field tech I did all of the audio patching for the Miss Ammerica Paggent. I think I might have a little information that is of use in doing a home theatre room.
Please feel free to ask any questions you want I will do my best to give or find the answers.
The prodject will be complicated and I suspect thart most of your friends will not notice the difference and not just because of a lack of knowledge. The human ear/brain combintion is very good at ignoring the things it does'nt want to hear. Your reward will be in a sence of increased clarity in the sounds you hear and in a decrease in the fatauge you will feel from listening to the programs you watch. That and the sattivaction of a job well done.
Grayson
