WSR's Holosonic™ Home Theatre System
Part II - The Noise Control Acoustical Foundation

By Gary Reber

Widescreen Review's New State-Of-The-Art Reference Theatre At New Facility

This is Part II of a series of articles on the design, development and execution of a new state-of-the-art Reference Home Theatre Laboratory at WSR's new office facility.in Temecula, California (north of San Diego, southeast of Los Angeles) that serves as Widescreen Review's and Surround Music's review laboratory. Part I appeared in Issue 48. Part VII concludes in Issue 53 (October 2001).
Our dedicated theatre measures 26-feet deep x 21-feet, 8.6-inch wide x 13 feet, 11.9-inch high, or approximately 8,000 cubic feet in volume.

The entire home theatre room and the rear-projection room were constructed with the complete QuietZone® Noise Control System build-materials package from the Owens Corning Science and Technology Center Acoustical Design Division. In this Part II group of articles, Harry Alter and Norman Varney of Owens Corning write about the application of the QuietZone approach as our acoustical foundation for the theatre. In a separate piece, acoustican Norm Varney discusses Owens Corning QuietZone building materials and their application in our theatre. This is followed by an article written by Ken DeLasho, who designed the Noise-Lock Sound Control Access Systems manufactured by the Industrial Acoustics Company. With this interated system of QuietZone building materials and IAC acoustic doors we were able to achieve a Sound Transmission Class rating of STC-63 for the theatre construction and a STC-61 rating for the doors. STC is a single number (laboratory) rating of how well a structure (wall, floor, door, window partition) reduces sound passing through it. A minimum STC-60 (partition) performance level is recommended for home theatre.

Feeney Acoustical Builders, based in Grass Valley, California, and Hodges Construction (who also served as our general contractor on our new building) of Murrieta, California, were retained to construct the room. John Feeney and Jeff Hodges are certified specialists in fabricating acoustical sound home theatres using Owens Corning QuietZone building materials and Industrial Acoustics Noise-Lock doors.

You can find this complete article in Issue 49 of Widescreen Review Magazine. Click here to view issue 49 in the back issue section.