Excerpt taken from AudioVideo Interiors:

Once Weinberg decided to build his theatre, he had to build the right team. He turned to the general contractor who had helped him build his home, Barry Neighbour, for advice on an A/V equipment supplier. Neighbour introduced Weinberg to Stuart Snowden, owner of Stuarts Audio. With the addition of the Acoustic Smart design team led by company president Richard Charschan, Weinberg had built the team of experts he needed to put together a first-class theatre.

The project got underway in August 2002, around the same time Weinberg reunited with Bruce Springsteen for an international tour in support of the album, The Rising. The complexities of communicating and sharing design ideas over email while Weinberg was on tour caused some delays, with the result that the theatre was not ready for its premiere—a Godfather marathon—until December 2004.

That may sound like a long time, but Weinberg knows from his own work in the music industry that great results don't come overnight. "People ask us why it takes two years to make a record. It's not a question of having enough material; it's a question of doing it right the first time. My best advice to anybody contemplating an involved project like a home theatre is not to worry so much about the timeframe, because it will always take longer than you think. You can make yourself nuts asking why something that was supposed to be done in six weeks isn't finished in eight weeks. Just remember, everybody wants to finish."

Weinberg was willing to wait to get the perfect theatre to match his vision. He started with one of the 8 predesigned options that Acoustic Smart offers its clients, but then he made some adjustments to fit his tastes. "He was looking for an old movie-time feel," recalls Charschan. "The colors and textures were a big part of creating the ambience of a long-gone era and transforming the space back to the 1920s. We actually had a hard time finding the right colors—gold, black, and especially the red. Max kept saying the reds were not red enough! He was looking for something very specific, and he would not rest until he got it exactly right." Weinberg ended up making some calls to contacts at NBC, where vendors with contacts in Hollywood tracked down the right color patterns. Today, those colors flow from the theatre into the red, black, and gold lobby, integrating the entertainment space into the rest of the house.

Weinberg's love of classic movie glamour extends throughout the design of his theatre—there's the tufted leather door at the entrance and the curtain that creates a sense of mystery and drama by hiding the screen until the movie begins. "It's the difference between sitting in front of your TV and going to the theatre," says Weinberg about the effect of a curtained screen. "The curtains open, the lights go down and suddenly you're not in Jersey anymore."

Given the space constraints and a desire to create the most comfortable audience experience, Weinberg and Charschan settled on seating for eight with two levels of Cinematech motorized theatre seats. A single Lutron Graphik Eye lighting controller with 6 to 20 presets plus a secondary entrance controller handles the lights. "Since this was a room that was essentially finished off, there was not a lot more we could do, nor did we need a lot more," says Snowden. All the lights are controllable from the remote and the wall panels.

HVAC issues were complex. The team not only needed to reroute a ventilation duct that passed overhead through the middle of the space, they also needed to create a dedicated ventilation system for the theatre. Without good ventilation and air conditioning in a theatre, the heat from human bodies and electrical equipment in such an insulated space would make the room temperature uncomfortable for anyone wearing more than a bathing suit. Since Weinberg likes his theatre cool, the crew took out the room's heating altogether, simply removing the 9-inch cast-iron water pipe that previously supplied heat.

The Equipment
A musician with Weinberg's credentials wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than perfect sound. He didn't want huge sound, he just wanted great sound—he wanted punch and impact, but not overwhelming, bone-rattling volume.

To meet Weinberg's audio goals, Charschan began with an Acoustic Smart noise barrier, a heavy, densely loaded vinyl material that weighs 1 pound per square foot. The designers use the noise barrier to create a hollow air cavity between the sheet rock and the studs to stop any vibrations that might transmit noise to the rest of the house. Except for the loudest explosions or sound effects, the theatre is fairly invisible to the rest of the house.

After the sheet rock is in place, Acoustic Smart adds its acoustic panels. The panels do nothing to prevent sound from leaving the room—that's the job of the noise barrier and the air channel. They simply prevent sound from bouncing around like a ping-pong ball. "We create bevels, shapes, and reveals to give the theatre an interesting look plus an acoustical dampening effect," says Charschan. "The acoustic treatment makes the room so quiet and soothing that when the audio comes on, you hear sounds you would not otherwise be able to notice. You hear the sound that the director intended, as opposed to hearing the sound of the room."