Following up on yesterday’s post, here are six more reasons why you don’t need a dedicated room to have a great home theater:

1) “Sound quality will always be compromised.”

Certainly it’s easier to craft a perfect sonic chamber in a dedicated room, with walls built to ideal dimensions and acoustic treatments in the perfect combination of absorptive and reflective surfaces, ensuring that audio sounds as close to the mixing room as possible. But with modern audio processing and powerful room-correction software available from companies like Audyssey and Trinnov, even the most difficult rooms can be tamed.

2) “There’s no good way to hide all of the speakers!”

There is a phenomenal array of speaker technologies available capable of delivering terrific audio that is all but invisible. (There actually are invisible speakers—installed behind the sheetrock and using the wall as a transducer—but their sound is a bit too diffuse and non-localizable for home theater use.) One readily available option is in-wall speakers that can be painted to match your wall color and blend in. High-performance in-wall models can be found from companies like Meridian, Bowers and Wilkins, Wisdom Audio, Triad, and many others.

Speakers can also be concealed in cabinetry or columns or woodwork. California Audio Technology (CAT) is renowned for custom building amazing-sounding speakers into practically any enclosure. Leon is another manufacturer renowned for building custom models. JBL Synthesis also has a variety of models that work well in cabinet installs.

Another great pairing with your projection screen might be Le Wing by Screen Research. This conceals high-performing front left/center/right speaker channels inside the screen housing to be dropped to the perfect listening location on demand.

Other “out of the box” thinking can be found with Monitor Audio’s SoundFrame series. These speakers can also be cleverly concealed behind artwork to look like a painting on the wall.

3) “There’s no good way to keep noise from escaping a family room, and no good way to keep noise outside the room from creeping in.”

I’ll be honest—this is a tough one to rebut. Soundproofing is difficult—and expensive—even in dedicated rooms, let alone an open space like a living room. The next best thing you could do would be to isolate the rooms you don’t want to disturb—say the bedrooms—using sound-isolating techniques on their walls. Even so, a movie played back at reference volume level will likely be heard throughout the home. There are some things you can do like using “Night” listening modes that compress the dynamics so loud sounds like explosions won’t be as loud. Audyssey also has a new technology called LFC that’s designed to contain the low-frequency sounds that most disturb the neighbors while still allowing for an impressive theater experience. Even so, with a 6½ year old of my own, this is a problem I struggle with so I’d be a liar if I told you this wasn’t difficult to overcome . . .

4) “Stadium seating is the only way to go.”

Stadium seating is great when you need to cram a lot of viewers into a shallow space, but for the typical home theater is really unnecessary. If you’re going to be routinely hosting events where you need to seat more than 8 to12 people, then a typical-sized living room might be tough. But if we’re talking typical daily viewing where it will likely just be the 2 to 6 people in your family, a couch will be totally adequate and far more comfortable. A couch is far more social, where you can turn to the person next to you and share a comment . . . or ask them to pass the scotch.

5) “Dedicated theater makes watching movies more of an event.”

When the lights are down and you’re watching the movie, the room becomes the last thing you or your guests are thinking about. And, yes, the process of getting up, gathering all of your drinks and snacks, and walking to another part of the home to watch a movie might be “an event.” It might also become “an inconvenience” over time. Equally part of “an event” is having everyone settle into the couch, saying, “OK, it’s time for the movie!” and then pressing the Watch Movie button on your control system and having all of the lights slowly dim, the window coverings drop, the screen lower, and the system turn on.

6) “I don’t care what you say—a living room theater will just never be good.”

For my final point of rebuttal, I offer up my own living-room home theater as an example. I promise you, it has impressed everyone who has ever sat through a movie there.

John Sciacca

A month ago, I wrote a post called “The Death of the Dedicated Theater Room” that listed all the reasons why a theater in a multi-use space such as a living room or family room makes so much more sense than going with a dedicated room. Multi-use spaces are generally more welcoming and comfortable, don’t require an exodus from one location to the next to watch a movie, and—most importantly—every home has one. (For simplicity’s sake, going forward I’m just going to call any multi-use space a living room.)

Before I begin debunking all of the reasons why you think you can’t put a great theater in your living room, I want to start by saying that if you have the means, budget, space, and desire for a dedicated media room in your home, go for it. This is definitely not a knock on building a dedicated room, and in many circumstances, a dedicated space can deliver an amazing experience.

With that said, here’s why I think you’re wrong when you say you can’t put a good theater in a living room.

1) “A living room lets in far too much light to be a good theater.”

Granted, one of the benefits of a dedicated room is that it often has a single door and no windows, which makes it easy to make the room completely dark. But there is a lot that can be done to make a living room acceptably dark for movie watching.