Home Theater Installation
A home theater is mostly a room problem. Where people actually sit, where the subwoofer can physically go, and whether wire can get from the equipment to the far side of the room without coming out of the wall. Placing speakers and tuning a room is close to what I did running audio for touring shows, except those rooms were nobody's choice. I do the layout, the mounting, the wire runs, the connections and the tuning, then hand it back running off one remote.
$40 an hour, 1 hour minimum. Every visit is billed at least one full hour even if the work takes thirty minutes. Why, and how to get the most out of it.
What the job involves
- Placement comes before anything gets unboxed. I start at the main seat and work out: screen height and viewing distance, the left and right speakers angled in at ear height, the center as close to the screen axis as the furniture allows, and the surrounds beside and slightly behind the seats rather than flat against the back wall where a couch usually pushes them.
- Subwoofer position gets found, not guessed. The sub goes up on the listening seat, a low sweep plays, and I crawl the floor along the walls listening for where the bass is most even. Then the sub goes there. Moving a sub four feet fixes more than buying a bigger one.
- Wire runs. Speaker wire and HDMI usually go inside the wall and through a basement or an attic, and where they cannot, they go in surface raceway that gets painted to match instead of stapled along the baseboard. Fire blocking, insulation and what the wall is made of decide which of those you get. A projector mount goes into joists, found and marked, not into drywall anchors.
- The HDMI chain, which is where most home theater trouble actually lives. Sources into the receiver, one cable out to the TV's eARC port, control turned on under whatever name the brand uses, and the TV's audio output set to pass audio through instead of converting it. Plain ARC cannot carry lossless Atmos. A long uncertified cable gives you sparkles or a black screen at 4K.
- Calibration. The microphone that came in the receiver box goes on a tripod at ear height in the main seat, the room correction runs from every position it asks for, and then I check the crossover, the distances and the channel levels by hand, because the subwoofer crossover and level are the two settings automatic room correction is least reliable on.
- One remote at the end. Inputs renamed to what they are, the remote or the app set so a single button takes you from off to watching, and a written note of what feeds what so the next person to touch it is not starting from scratch.
What changes the price
Channel count and wire routing do most of it. Five speakers and a sub in a room with an unfinished basement underneath is a different day than the same setup on a main floor over a slab where every run has to go up and over. Surface raceway is faster than fishing a wall. A projector adds throw distance math, a ceiling mount into joists and a lot of ladder time, and high ceilings add more. Gear that is already bought and sitting in the room saves the hour we would spend choosing it. Tuning is the tail end of the job, and you are allowed to tell me to stop once it works.
What people usually get wrong
Buying the speakers before deciding where anyone sits. Surround channels want to be beside and just behind your ears, and if the couch is against the back wall there is nowhere for them to go. The other one is the calibration microphone. It ships in the box with almost every receiver, it is the step that makes the most audible difference, and it is the step people skip.
Send me this and I can quote it without coming out
There is no trip charge either way, but a remote quote is faster for both of us and it costs you nothing to try.
- A photo from the main seat facing the screen wall, and one from the screen wall facing back, so I can see the seating and the ceiling.
- Model numbers for the TV or projector, the receiver, the speakers and the sub, or a list of what you are still deciding on.
- Room width, length, ceiling height, and the distance from the main seat to where the screen will be. A rough tape measure is fine.
- A photo of the wall or corner where the equipment will live, including the outlet and any existing wall plates.
- What is on the other side of that wall and what is under the floor: another room, a garage, a finished basement, an attic, or slab.
When I am the wrong call
I do not do electrical work. No new outlets, no new circuits, nothing inside a junction box. If the plan needs power behind the screen or at the equipment, an electrician goes first and I work after them. And if you own serious gear and want the room measured and acoustically treated, or a projector calibrated to a standard, hire someone who does only that. I get a room sounding right and working right. That is a different job.