New house planning/setup

[iowastate89]

<font color='#000000'>Hi,

My wife and I are around 2 months away from starting construction on our new house. &nbsp;I'm doing some advanced legwork on home theater options and have a few questions.

I'm setting up a fairly large common area (probably 20 feet by 35 feet in size), we plan on placing a few seats/couches facing a fireplace with a plasma TV (or LCD) over the fireplace, and 2 bookcases on either side of the fireplace. &nbsp; The first dilemma is that we want the HT equipment to be as invisible as possible. &nbsp; In order to accomodate that, I was thinking of placing the front speakers inside the bookcase, with the thought that the bookcase door would be opened whenever we wanted to watch a movie or listen to music. &nbsp;

Question 1: If I go with some speakers like the Onix or Axioms, will placing them in a cabinet like that significantly reduce the sound quality? &nbsp; (The fronts will be totally exposed when the doors are open).

Question 2: There's no real good spot for the surround speakers in our setup (other than in the ceiling), will some A/V receivers, such as the new Denon 4802, be able to work well just with a 3.1 system (2 fronts, 1 center, 1 subwoofer)?

Question 3: Is ceiling mounting surround speakers an ok option, and are there any vendors specializing in ceiling speakers that match well with the Onix or Axiom types of speakers?

Thanks so much for your input!

isu89</font>

 

[Audioholics]

<font color='#000080'>Couple of things to add to the discussion:

<ul><li>If you MUST put speakers in the bookshelves, you'll want to make sure any front speakers aren't impeded by bookshelf doors. By that, I mean the front of the speakers should, at a minimum, be able to fire without &quot;running into&quot; a door that is open and positioned parrallel to the firing direction of the speaker. You want the speaker to be able to disperse sound in an arc emanating from the drivers.

<li>If you do not have side walls, make sure at a minimum that your ceiling-mounted surround speakers are at the same height. I've seen some pretty bad setups where, due to a vaulted ceiling, the left rear and right rear are over 4 feet off in height. This makes for a strange surround experience.</ul></font>