ith the free patent-pending Audio Advice Home Theater Design Tool, you can now easily design a high-performance room with the tool doing all the complex calculations in real-time. Let’s take a look at how to use the tool. Start by moving the sliders to adjust the room to match the exact dimensions of your own space, and hit the Next button to begin designing your home theater!

Under the "seating" section, add how many seats you'd like per row and how many rows you want. If you select two or more rows, additional sliders will appear, which let you change your riser height and depth. Now choose which row you want as the primary row. This tells the system to maximize performance for this row. Then set the distance from the screen to the seats by either moving the slider or using your mouse to move the seats. You can even set aisle position and width.

Click Next to move to the video setup. First, select if you are using a TV or a Projector. When you select "projector," you are now prompted to choose your brand and model. Choose the aspect ratio of your screen. Note that each selection has a pop-up with a detailed explanation. In this case, explaining widescreen versus sixteen by nine. Adjust the screen size to match your desired immersion level, with the average being equivalent to sitting in the middle of a theater and higher in the front of a theater. Choose your screen gain, which is explained in the pop-up. The Audio Advice team is available on chat, phone, and in-store to answer additional questions.

Audio Advice uses data from its projector laboratory tests and your design to determine the ideal projector location to achieve the best picture for your room. It also shows you the brightness in nits and turns green if your brightness is fully HDR compatible or yellow if your projector is too dark. You can move the projector forward and backward using the slider or your mouse and see the impact on the brightness.

Let's move to the audio setup! First, choose in-wall or box speakers. If you select in-wall, you can choose an acoustically transparent screen that moves the speakers behind the screen. In addition to main and rear surrounds, the tool also allows you to select front wides. You also have a choice of the number of subwoofers and atmos speakers.

Note that if you make any changes, such as moving seats or removing speakers, all other speakers will adjust in real-time to their new optimal locations. If you move something out of spec, you will see it turn orange, and you can move it back to a non-orange position. This allows you to achieve an optimally designed room in a fraction of the time previously possible.

Turn on the sound dispersion button first to see the impact of the most revolutionary part of the tool. Audio Advice’s proprietary AI algorithm addresses one of the greatest challenges in theater design which is to balance the design from 100% focused on the main listening position with a design that maximizes the performance across all seats. Most people will want to shift as far to AI optimized as possible until just before speakers turn orange to achieve the best performance for all seats while still 100% in Dolby spec for the primary listening position.

There are a set of button views at the bottom, starting with a ruler showing you the main measurements as you build. The sightline button shows how the tool automatically adjusts screen height for optimal viewing from all seats. You can also see how the screen looks from the primary viewing seat, zoom in and out and use your mouse to view from different angles.

When you save your design, review it with an Audio Advice expert to ensure you avoid common mistakes and have the best design possible for your room. The system saves your design with a printable version of all measurements, including screen height, speaker positions, distances, and even the pole length you need for your projector. If you are installing it yourself, you will find how-to-videos, an inspiration gallery, and everything home theater-related at AudioAdvice.com. If Audio Advice is installing for you, prepare to have an incredible room to enjoy for years to come!