How would you rate your listening room?

I hope Garfish will not mind if I vary from his topic, especially since I posted about my room and plans to improve it. I would like input on speaker choices to build into the space in my walls (during the reconstruction I described) . These would serve exclusively for Dolby 5.1 and beyond, and will only be active when movies are in play. The ideal design would be one of the new surround speakers that measure only 4" or 5" deep. I have space for any depth at the rear of my room, but the sides are limited, due to the construction of the load bearing walls. It has been suggested by some friends in the audio business (NOT speaker companies) to consider the new B&W in wall surround speakers, as well as Vandersteen and Aerial. I looked at all three web sites, and Vandersteen and B&W both fit the need for the side and rear positions, but the Aerial is quite deep, and making it work on the side positions will be almost impossible. Does anyone have suggestions, especially those who may have actually installed and used such a system? I would like to do this right and not look back later and wish I had gone another route. By the way, the current system is Soundlab U-1 for the front, Vandersteen dialogue channel and Fosgate SD 180 Bipolar for sides. There is currently no rear surround speakers. Everything is driven by individual mono tubes amps.

Albert, I think if your going to build a room for audio and video, you might want to look at the future directions you may go. If six channel is of any intrest to you, and SACD or DVDa live up to there potential, it may be only two or three years before you start looking at a state of the art surround system. A few of the new SACD (DMP) that I've gotten are recorded in DSD six channel. The recommendation in the flier talks about the proper set-up of six channels and strongly recommends the same speaker for the five main channels. If that was the case the set-up is rather like a cicle in the middle of your room, and this might have a large impact on how you chose to proceed. Just a thought, good luck. J.D.

Worldcup86, it is hard to say cause it depends on many factors. One of the things that seems to play a big role are the normal bass modes of your room, which are determined by the height, length and width of the room.

In your room, you would have 'doubles' on 141, 188 and 283 Hz, with wide mode spacing at 70, 141, 188, 211 and 263 hZ. It is my understanding that the co-existance of doubles and wide mode spacing at the same frequencies can cause an audible problem, so you might find bass a bit uneven and diifult to control.

I am just recently starting to get a handle on all of this, so anyone that has more input feel free to augment or correct as you see fit.

Niels.

You mean my closet? D+ (I use monitors as headphones, sounds good, but for some reason my neck hurts.)

Albert: There was positive talk of Linn in wall speakers a while back which you may want to look into. Linn has a good track record with standard box speakers that work well when positioned close to the front wall, such as the Index and Kan models. I find my horse shoe shaped room too difficult to describe in the thread, but may post photos if I can get my wife to shoot them (I can't be around camera flashes). I would love to have some feedback on it before I relocate the equipment. I would rate it as the worst room that I have ever had (short of a dorm room), but it's still OK. I have taken up listening in the near field on some of the nights that my wife retires early.