How Important are Doors in Cinema Design?

"How Important are Doors in Home Cinema Design?"

By Harry Alter

An example: Your client has requested that his new home theater not disturb the rest of the household during viewing. The walls to the theater are designed to achieve an impressive Sound Transmission Class (STC) performance rating of 65. The entrance door to the theater is solid oak with full perimeter gasketing. Everything should be great, but it isn't...you've got a problem, a BIG PROBLEM. Your client can hear every word coming from the cinema while he's in the study a couple of doors down the hall. What happened?

Many things can determine the overall performance of a theater, and doors are a common problem. Many people think that by increasing the wall's performance, it will overcome any inadequacy of the door. Not true. In fact, you could continue to increase the wall's STC performance far beyond its acoustical rating and it would have no effect on the outcome. A standard solid oak door with perimeter seals has an STC rating of 25. As a result, the overall composite wall performance on this example is now only a STC-34. That's the same as a regular 2x4 stud wall with no insulation. An expensive theater just became more expensive to fix.

AV RoomService provides full service noise control design recommendations to not only increase the cinema's performance, but to assure every aspect of you client's noise control concerns are addressed early in the deign stages...not later.