The acoustics of my basement suck. I have tried the workarounds I can wrangle, but it's time to get drastic.
Most accurately, the bass response blows. My basement is large, and runs the length of the house. The largest room in the basement is L shaped, spanning the length of the entire structure. If it makes sense, the bottom leg of the L is the theater area, and it is 15x17. I think the area of the room in total is about 1150 sqft or so, so its overall a large room.
Maybe this won't get formatted to death...
This is actually quite adequate space for my setup. I have a 120" projector screen, 7.2.4 setup from a denon 3600 and klipsch RP series speakers with monoprice Ambers in the ceiling, and everything points just right at a three seater couch.
But the room is big, square, not much in the way of room treatments beyond a couple of rugs, and the drop ceiling comes in at 7'2" (which is a bit low for my ceiling mounted down firing height speakers). The floor is vinyl plank with a built in underlayment on top of concrete slab. As a result, my subwoofers don't give me a lot of bang for the buck. It doesnt help that they're really mediocre (two klipsch r112sws) but every now and again you have that moment of clarity where a tone hits you just right and you realize what you're missing. The layout of the room also prevents me from positioning my subs in a way that works the best (as I would have to sit directly under the projector and to the side of both the rear surrounds and far from any sort of position that would be amenable to the side surrounds either... and the atmos ceiling speaker effect would also be lost).
I do have four tactile transducers in my couch, which does help scratch that itch a bit. But every now and again they do something weird that breaks immersion... I have every intention of keeping them- they rock- but I feel like I run them with a higher crossover than is warranted just to cheat some bass "feel" out of my system, and while 90% of the time they do great, sometimes they're sort of wonky. I watched the streamed version of LOTR on HBOmax and I had to go cut back the crossover substantially and the gain as well as they were just going nuts even in mundane scenes.
So I have a few ideas, and I wanted to get input.
My first idea is a "floor riser". You don't get substantial tactile response off a solid slab floor, compared to in a theater on another floor of a house. What about raising the floor?
I can remove my drop ceiling and sheetrock the theater area. Why my drop ceiling is so low I don't know, but after shimming the joists for a couple of water pipes, i can have an 8'4" ceiling or thereabouts. If i build a riser in that room, it would likely be a 2x6 frame spanning the area, with OSB only subfloor, and berber carpet or something on top. It would be about a 6" riser as a result. The end result would still be the sensation of a room with a relatively higher ceiling, while also hopefully giving me some of the shake I want.
I could then plant a pair of 18" Daytons or similar behind the listening position. As it is, I'm only using one sub out on my receiver although I have two subs (and four transducers hooked to another sub amplifier) daisychained. I could potentially swing a 21" sub too but I'm not sure I'd enjoy that.
Aside from that, I think it would also look pretty cool. You can enter the room from the rear of the theater, walk up a short ramp to the raised platform, and then step down to reach the rest of the basement. I think the overall idea would be fairly good looking, and I sort of like the idea of visually distinct subdivisions in that very large open basement room. It also has the side benefit of elevating my speakers from any water that may find it's way to the basement. I've only ever had substantial water entry once- after a direct hit by a hurricane- but what if a pipe bursts or something? Elevating the valuables seems like a good idea.
Has anyone else tried building a raised platform for acoustic and tactile reasons rather than just viewing height?
I also intend to add a layer of sheetrock to the walls (currently clad in very ugly plywood panels with a wood panel veneer- think 70s chic but built in the late 90s), quite a few bass traps and absorbers, and possibly stuffing the riser with mineral wool and possibly the ceiling as well when sheet rocking it.