I've been reading posts on here for quite some time and am hoping you fine folks can give me some advice as I turn our 'library' into a home theater. We purchased a 60 year old home in the city about a year and a half ago and have been slowly remodeling. I stress slowly b/c A.) I'm not very handy, though I love trying and B.) I have narcolepsy so I quite often find myself lacking the energy to do things. My wife would probably add that I have problems with impulse control and have a tendency to start projects and then switch to a new project as I get bored easily. Fortunately this project involves my home theater so I doubt that will be a problem! Now, onto the room (I'm going to try attaching a picture with the layout).
The room sits off our kitchen/dining area and is our favorite room in the house. We call it the library as it currently has floor to ceiling bookshelves lining several of the walls and my wife would like to keep the same feel to the room. What makes the install a little difficult for me is the size and the layout of two large windows and the door. My initial questions fall into two general categories so I'll try to break them out to make it easier to understand what I'm talking about.
Room Layout The room is approximately 14x10 with 8 foot ceilings. As I mentioned in the last paragraph my wife would like to keep the 'library' feel to the room so my plan is to make the home theater portion of the room as inconspicuous as possible. The two large windows (start just off the floor and extend to within a foot of the ceiling) are creating problems, though I think I've solved that by placing a sectional sofa along those two walls (will cover the lower half of the windows). Unfortunately this makes the positioning of the surround speakers more difficult which is why I'm thinking about in-ceiling speakers. If you take a look at the diagram I've attached you'll see my plan is to keep two sets of floor-to-ceiling shelves along with a shorter third set of shelves that ties into one of the floor-to-ceiling units. I would like to mount a flat screen tv on the wall above the short bookshelf and will run all the wires through the wall and the back of the bookshelf. The best place for the equipment (Blu-Ray, receiver, etc) seems to be the corner where the short bookshelf meets the floor-to-ceiling.
I've spent quite a bit of time staring at the room and this seems to be the most logical way of meeting my wife's requirements (Library feel and the ability to seat at least 4 people), though I'm open to any and all suggestions.
Equipment TV - I work at a store that sells appliances along with a few tv's so I can get most of the big brands (Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, etc) at cost. I have a 32" Panasonic LCD that I love and was impressed with a friend's 42" Panasonic plasma so I'm leaning towards their 50".
AV/Receiver - I haven't spent much time on this yet but have heard great things about the Onkyo TX-SR605.
Speakers - This is where I'm really confused, especially when it comes to the surround speakers. It seems that I should be able to go with a smaller set of speakers given the small size of the room (140 sq ft) but I'm concerned given past experience. I had a set of Bose sub/sat speakers in college that always sounded 'thin' (if that makes sense) so I ended up trading them in for a set of large Polk floor standing speakers. I have a set of Klipsh di-polar surrounds downstairs that I've been very happy with but I question how well a speaker like this would work in an installation like this. If I were to mount them on the two side walls they will have to be almost 8' up the wall and will be positioned very close to the back wall (almost in a corner). If I mount them on the wall behind the sofa they will still need to be high on the wall to compensate for the window. Neither of these seem like the best setup so I started thinking about using in-ceiling units. I've spent some time researching them but have never used them and thought I'd see what some more experienced home theater owners/installers thought. I'm considering going with in-wall speakers for the front three units but again, I don't want to sacrifice too much quality. Anyone have any thoughts/comments on speaker layout selection? I haven't researched brands yet but have heard good things about Aperion.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you might be able to offer... as you can probably tell by my post I'm still very early in this project and struggling to organize it in my head.
Sitting directly below an in-ceiling surround speaker can be very annoying, perhaps a small pair of satellite speakers hanging off the ceiling would be a better option in this case.
