# ?? about professional home theater setup



## Bradcny (Oct 21, 2010)

A local independently owned electronics retailer offers home theater setup. Everything from wall mounting the speakers to concealing the wires to setting up all systems for sonic clarity. My question is about how long does it take to do this for a 7.1 surround system. I understand that not all situations are the same, but there are 3 guys that come and work together to get it done. Any thoughts as to how long it might take?


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

All of this kind of work is purely custom, so there's no real way to say. It also depends on what level of detail you're paying for.

Mounting wall-mountable speakers doesn't take that long. Concealing wires is work, and possibly lots of difficult work. Balancing speaker outputs and setting timing may be fairly quick or maybe not even possible.

I stopped doing low-end home theater work a couple of years ago, and rarely get involved in anything less than a $10,000 budget. It got REAL OLD spending 6 hours concealing cables and mounting speakers for someone's $300 HTIB only to have them complain and try not to pay me because that system they picked out doesn't sound like a $10,000 home theater, and is confusing to use because of it's limited connectivity, quirky remote, or whatever. And then they'd want to call me when they forgot how to use it, and try to get me to come over and retrain them. So not worth it.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

Wall mounting the speakers should only take one guy an hour or two.
Setting up the system for proper sound would take less than an hour.

The biggest variable is hiding the wires which is dependent upon the room type and several other factors. Might take a couple of hours. Might be 6 hours.

All told, I could probably do it in 5-6 hours, depending on the room. 

Based on that, with three guys, 2-3 hours.

Of course, there's also a lot of variables involved with "sonic clarity". Are they going to accoustically treat the room or just dial in the speakers. If the former, that could add several hours and additional costs. Are they going to calibrate the display? That alone could take a couple of hours. Are they going to program a remote? Lighting? That will add time too.


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## Bradcny (Oct 21, 2010)

spartanstew said:


> Wall mounting the speakers should only take one guy an hour or two.
> Setting up the system for proper sound would take less than an hour.
> 
> The biggest variable is hiding the wires which is dependent upon the room type and several other factors. Might take a couple of hours. Might be 6 hours.
> ...


Perhaps I should have provided more details. This is in no way going to be the type of home theater setup that people spend thousands of dollars on with the custom lighting and the theater seating and the acoustic panels, and so on and so on. I have two primary motivations for wanting to do this. First, I have a mini heart attack every time my two-year-old son almost knocks the stands over, so I want them out of his reach and, second, I just like the way it looks from an aesthetics POV. Now, to answer one of your questions, no, they are not going to acoustically treat the room, they're just going to calibrate the speakers. One thing that might shed a little light on things is that when the guy I spoke to found out that I have an unfinished basement under the room, he seemed pretty excited about that.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

To just mount the speakers and hide the wires should only take a couple of hours in that case. 

Calibrating the speakers might take 30 minutes (your receiver can probably do it automatically in 15 minutes).

Three guys should be out of there in 3 hours.


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