Comity

Go, I would say from the looks of the speakers that you do have separate woofer and tweeter components mounted on one panel.....they look to be pretty good quality and should provide a nice sound. I agree that if you put the center of the speaker panel at ear level you will be fine. You can tweak the bass management with your receiver to give you the best overall sound, depending on how much low frequency info you can get out of them. It seems like so much information these days is sent to the center channel that you want the center to be driven as full range as possible. If there was ever one speaker you would want to be as high of quality as possible it is the center channel. I feel your pain with wiring. I also wired my basement and it took multiple (and multiple) trips to the hardware store, but hat seems to be the norm for most of my home projects. It also sounds like you have adequate coverage by going with 20 A circuits. I went a little crazy with my install and ran dedicated 20 A circuits for the amp and projector. In retrospect, I don't think it was necessary. Thanks for the link....I'll check it out.

It sounds like you have done a thorough job thinking it through. You reminded me of the subs with the dual placement....excellent idea to give you the flexibiity to add another sub at a later time. Also, I liked that you separated the power and speaker wires...always a good thing. In a previous home I had used acoustic drop ceiling tiles to great effect as far as the surround system was concered. Only don't expect them to make much difference on keeping the sound levels down upstairs. In fact, I was informed by a friend who had gone upstairs to use the bathroom directly above that he could hear every word of a conversation I was having at the time.....go figure! Now I want to re-do my basement home thearter! Looking forward to the pics.

Thanks Go, and you are right about not wanting to have to re-do later. I have a couple of friends who didn't get their set up right when building their home theater and have come to regret it later. I see now with the length of the wall between hallway and other wall being 8 feet, that does make it difficult to achieve a somewhat symetrical setup. I would say from the dimensions you provided the setup you arrived at would be your best bet. I was a little concered about light pollution coming from the window directly across the TV, but with an LED TV that shouldn't be so much of a concern and can be corrected with window treatments. A 65 inch would fit your room perfectly, although you could certainly get by with a bit smaller. Since you are doing in-wall speakers, you will have to be careful to get the speaker height set right the first time. I would recommend the front right and left speakers having the tweeters at about the same levels as your ears while seated on the couch. I would place the center just below the TV rather than above, especially if you go with a 65". You could always hang the TV a few inches higher to give the center channel enough height. The side and rear surrounds would then be mounted so that the tweeters are 2-4 ft above seated ear level. That should give you the best spread on the rear effects. I don't think the back speakers are as critical placement-wise, but they should be at the same level as the side surrounds. THX-derived surround modes differ a little from Dolby's in that they are optimized for the back surrounds to be closer together, but I don't think it will have that much impact anyway with the couch being so near to the back wall. I would use some decent wire no less than 14 Guage (Audioquest makes a good inexpensive in-wall wire) and leave yourself plenty of extra at the mounting point. Maybe you can post some pics when you get it set up?

Hi Go, Long time member just not much for posting. I do want to comment on your proposed layout but it would help if you could provide your screen size and what type of speakers you will be using and whether or not they are wall mountable. It looks like right now you have the TV on teh 14 ft wall? Is it possible that the couch could be centered between the hall entrance and the other side wall (without the window) on the wall with the hallway in order to place the TV and front channes on the long wall? The other two chairs could then be placed to form a sort of semi-circle. Depending on the screen size you may not want to be almost 17 ft back from the screen.