Home Theater: The New Beginning

I think that pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'm going to try to focus on using more pics to describe the new build, and less words. I'm not the most abbreviated individual if that's not obvious, so we'll see how successful I am ;)

The new theater was again, going to reside in the basement. I wanted to make sure that this theater was going to be at least as big as the last one.  Here is the floor plan of the basement that I originally designed and gave to the builder:

And here is a close-up of the space at the top-left that will become the new theater:

I originally envisioned the room as more open spaces, then separate rooms, and eventually the theater became one large long space.  When we got around to actually framing the basement, we managed to tuck the AV closet under the stairs, and provide a side  door for access along the hallway. Sweet!  This meant that the room could be one long room that went from one end of the house to the other.  At the time this seemed sensible, to maximize flexibility. I read somewhere that 'open' basement spaces are better for entertainment flow, and I thought it would work fine to have the theater at one end, and a bar, pooltable, etc., on the other. Later however, this didn't prove itself out from a sound and space perspective, which I'll discuss later.