AV units, cinema rooms and other details to consider

We have been designing and installing furniture to house audio visual for some time now but lately demand seems to be increasing. There are plenty of room details as well as furniture details to be considered.

Heat build up within furniture can damage expensive amplifiers, these and other hardware such as sky boxes give out plenty of heat, the heat soak can cause all kinds of damage. To allow the heat to drain away there needs to be big enough holes for the air to enter the cabinet at the bottom and leave the cabinet at the top. Vents and grilles are generally unsightly and detract from what is otherwise a nice piece of furniture, we prefer to design these out.

In this piece of furniture we had several rack systems for a whole house system which was cabled by vistion.co.uk  and installed by Sevenoaks Sound and Vision. In this case the cabinets have port holes under the racks allowing the air into the bottom of the cabinets, air flows out through the back of the cabinets into the stud wall and is expelled into another room behind.

This is our layout showing the internals of the stud wall with some ply inserted to mount the forthcoming TV on.

Acoustic fabric can allow for heat  dissipation too especially useful when cabinets contain speakers and other hardware. We are using this detail on a forthcoming unit which is currently in installation. I’m sure I’ll be bringing you some pictures of this soon.

Acoustic insulation should be considered if possible. This is especially important if there is a bedroom above the room. Subwoofers producing low frequency vibrations that travel long distances need to be insulated from the quieter areas of your home. We can often make a lot of difference by fitting acoustic board and insulation into the ceiling or wall on a metal frame insulated with neoprene washers. In many cases it isn’t necessary to remove the existing ceiling but we can suspend a ceiling below.

There are plenty of options available that can include lighting and other details.

Anyway I will soon be blogging the previously mentioned set up, there are some pictures of the ceiling on our facebook page if you are interested in the process here.