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Hmmm, I must be missing something here. In my past two homes I have had 5.1 and due to the room being used for a lot more then just a theater I had my surrounds mounted on the rear wall (mostly because I was missing all or part of a side wall). But it was my understanding in a perfect world you would want the surrounds mounted on either side or to the side and slightly back of the listening area. Even though most setup you see have the surrounds in or on the back wall I thought ideally they should be on the side walls. Is this not necessarily true? More or less as I am construction a HT from the ground up, yes I am stuck with the double doors and the space allotted but I dont have to worry about additional use. So my thinking was that even if I went the 5.1 route the first choice would be to have the two surround speakers on the side of the listening area at ear height. Next I thought if I went the 6.1 route I would just take the 5.1 optimal in my mind setup and add a rear center. If I went the 7.1 route I would just add two speakers in the rear instead of the one rear center. While it might be fun to say I have a 7.1 setup what I am really looking for is the right sound. I am totally fine with 5.1 or 6.1 if that is in my best interest. Currently I have 8 speakers to work with - more if I pirate some from my current upstairs system. In the heritage line I have Chorus, Forte II, two set of Heresy and an Academy. Again my thinking (flawed as it may be) was that if I went the rear wall method (read no side speakers) I would be losing a few feet of separation do to the closet/stairs in the back. That is why I reduced the height and made a shelf to widen the area in the back. How about one speaker on the closet shelf and another in roughly the same area on the other side suspended from the ceiling? For the sake of argument lets take the sides at ear level out of the equation and stick with 6.1. Do I want the three rears (LS, Rear Center, RS) to be on the same plane? Do I need them to be the same height? Do I need them to be the same speaker? To that final question consider that when I was thinking 7.1 I had 4 Heresys and 2 Forte IIs. My use of one Forte (center) would leave me with and extra Forte. If I put 3 Heresys across the back then I will still have the extra Forte, but will also have an extra Heresy. Might a better choice be to go with Heresy/Forte II/Heresy across the back? That leaves me a full set of Heresy to play with elsewhere in the house. For the time being I dont think I want to use the Fortes as surrounds a put a Heresy in the Center. I believe Chorus/Forte/Chorus up front will work nicer together then Chorus/Heresy/Chorus, but will probably experiment once the room is done. BTW, I totally like the idea of the some pulley system that raises and lowers the side speaker excellent wow factor! However, this morning I stood and looked at the room for a long time with my current heresy on the shelf and the fake in the ceiling. That puts two powerful speakers within a few feet of each other (overkill perhaps?). So if I dont really NEED the surrounds to be on the sides I think it might be best to use fewer speakers and move them back. Question now is completely on the back wall (cant with the one on the closet unless it is in front of the other two or I forgo the closet and put it next to wall created by closet) or put one on the closet/shelf and put the other two inline with the closet. This would mandate some way of ceiling mounting or suspending from threaded rods or cable. I am open to any and all ideasso keep em coming Many thanks for all the ideas and advice, Rich

Oops, forgot to mention that seating will probably be two rows of 3 seats just about where the text "Heresy's in question..." are. I plan on finishing the ceiling in drywall with a large PVC pipe and access door to area where the projector will be mounted.

Here is my lame attempt at dimensions of the room. Let me know if you need more. Not quite to scale. The wall with the screen is 13 feet wide the room is 16 feet deep. Closet around stairs is about 2X3. Other then the small area by the pocket door the room is basically 13X16. Thanks for any and all help, Rich

Due to some basement equipment (pump diaphragm for my well) I needed to move to open up the room but could not move it to where the furnace/etc. is I had to construct a closet to hide it. Then it dawned on me that putting the rack in the wall of that same closet would kill two birds with one stone AND get the equipment to rear/side of the room away from the screen. However the pump diaphragm takes up most of the foot print of the closet up to a height of about 2 feet. So my rack is actually mounted up high enough so the bottom piece of equipment will clear the diaphragm. Maybe I could construct something to cover the diaphragm that would also function as a shelf. Then put all the amps at the bottom of the rack resting on that newly created shelf. As stated earlier the ears would more or less cover the actual rails and with the handles still on the amps should look nice. Keep those ides coming guysand dont forget to give me your .02 worth on my Heresy surrounds in the ceiling or on speaker stands see Ceiling mount or speaker stands? post please. Thanks for all the input!

My original plan was to rack mount the Carver stuff and buy shelves for the rest. I thought that would keep with the rack look and provide for all of my needs. If I space the rails narrower to fit the Carver stuff I cannot then use standard spacers/vents/panels. So far it looks to me that a shelf for every component will add up quickly (4 amps, preamp, DVT, HTPC, Music Server, etc.) as the shelves are not all that cheap. I like the rack mounted look and as minn_male42 pointed out the ears might still give that rack look when in a shelfnot a bad idea. colterphoto1 had a great idea to make in effect two racks. One narrower for Carver stuff and one standard width. I think I will give this some thought and exploration. I would think with some creative trimming where the rack meets the drywall I can make it appear as one rack. Access is really not an issue the rack is being built in the side of a closet that is pretty deep. Tomski, thanks for the heads up on the spacingwould not want the Carver stuff to offset the rest. I cant really figure out why the carver stuff lines up on some sets of holes and not on other, but my Midatlantic rails do look like the holes are grouped and not evenly spaced. FYI the TMF-25 amps are about a 3 space height.

I need some input from the rest of you. I have two goals here and think there is a good chance they conflict. 1 Great sound wanted 2 Nice looking or wow factor My HT has a 6 foot wide double door located directly below a steel beam. Just after the end of the door is a closet that hides the basements steps. Moving the double doors, steel beam or closet is not an option. I have already ripped out the finished closet/door that was there in favor of a lower door with a shelf to make room for rear speakers. Please see the pictures below with explanations. The entire wall is pretty much door or wall space that the doors open back onto. I am considering putting a set of Heresys in the ceiling for my surrounds. Pros in my mind are: Looks cool, does not interfere with door operation, looks cool, and oh yea, I think it would look cool. Cons are: have to figure out how to pull it off, might not be optimal sound, no future movement of the speaker once finished. My other option would be to get some sort of speaker stand and put them in front of the one door at ear level. You can always open just one door and if need be when not in use I could move the speaker/stand to open the doors. This is pretty much the entire wallon far right you can see a piece of front wall on far left you can see the start of the closet. That black vertical line is where the door edge is when fully open. Check out the Greyhound on the couch outside the room. He does not use the surfboard in the corner much since he retired from the track. This is the corner of wall in question and back wall. The shelf built from reducing closet height will hold on of the rear speakers. NOTE upper right corner of picture. I have constructed a cardboard heresy to test fit my option of ceiling mounting. More on that below. Here you can see cardboard Heresy in the ceiling just clearing the operation of the door and relation to back speaker on shelf. Opposite wall from the one with the double doors. My second option would be to place the Heresy surrounds on stands at ear level when seated. Does not have the wow factor as ceiling mounts, but surely easier and would provide for movement of speakers as needed. I see a lot of talk about custom speaker cabinets on the forum here. Ill start taking order for these as soon as I finish the room. Excellent attention to detail as well as craftsmanship. Better shot of ceiling mount and rear. Speaker has to be fairly flat and that tell me it points down a bit too much. Would I be sacrificing sound quality for speakers up and out of the way? Any other thoughts on my options? Any advice as to which is better? Thoughts on how to actually do the mounting if I move forward with ceiling mount?

Well, at least I am not going insane in my thought patterns. I built the rack with the standard spacing thinking I can use any standard shelf/vent/spacer/etc. It is a shame it is not standard spacing. Sort of deceiving on Carvers part in my book. I remember buying some of that equipment back in 1992 thinking some day I will have a wall of rack mounted equipment. Well, good marketing on their part. Live and learn. Now how can I get some one to fabricate me just the right sized piece from aluminum? FYI for any other carver TFM owners. The vertical spacing matches up as you move it around the railsnot every setyou have to play with it a bit.

In an earlier post http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=57146&forumID=69&catID=19&search=1&searchstring=&sessionID={E5D6FA1F-26D3-4FA2-B179-9A1A5E6EE564} I got a lot of great information about building a 19 rack for my equipment. Well this morning I got all my parts together and went to build it and have either run into a problem or dont understand something basic about rack mounted equipment. Please set me straight. I purchased some blank spacers for the rack so I could get my rails the correct width and keep everything square during construction. With the rails and spacers assembled I measured the center to cent space of the rails it is 18.25 inches. Just to be sure I measured the distance between my equipment holes center to center with the rack handles removed it is 17.75 inches. The equipment happens to be 3 Carver TFM-25 amps, a Carver AV-60 Four amp and a Carver CT-17 preamp. All Carver all the same width. I dont have any other rack mountable equipment to compare to. When using rack mountable equipment dont you simply take the handles off, put equipment in the rails and hold it in place with the screws??? Am I confused on how to mount the equipment or does my Carver equipment have non-standard spacing? Thanks, Rich

Interesting, because that is the exact projector I was considering over the Runco. I would think between 3k and 9k (Aprox MSRP) that there must be some benefit I am not seeing...but I am finding it really hard to justify the extra 6K. I can buy it locally for $2,199. Thanks for the tip on the FL company. Looking more and more like Runco it out. Thanks!

In the interest of public service the only recommendation I would make as the receiver of the package would be to giggle/settle the peanuts then add more to make them denser. They settled a lot during shipping and there was lots of air space. This let the box become beat up and mushy instead of stiff. But since they arrived safe and sound I am not complaining. Thanks again, Brad

I bought the HBR Heresys that Brad Marshall (Redtop) was selling a couple of weeks back. All I can say is great packaging and excellent communication. Brad was a pleasure to deal with and an all around nice guy. I would not hesitate to do business with him again, nor should you. Thanks, Brad

Man, you guy are the best. So far this week you have set me straight on the single Forte for my center and its orientation. The right way to figure the screen height from the floor up and how/why to put my Heresys on their sides in the rear. Many many thanks! So on to the question of the day. I thought I was pretty smart as I finished off the rest of my basement last fall prior to the HT work that is in order this fall. I put a 1.5 inch PVC pipe running the 40 feet from the nasty side of basement (read furnace, water heater, etc.) to the finished side. My thinking was that I could pull any future wires through it. I had a local A/V store come check out my space and put the sell to me on some equipment I still need (tuner/preamp/processor, screen, and projector). We talked about wires for projector and future expandability for Crestron and cat 5, coax, etc. Anyway, I mentioned the pipe and that I was going to pull my dedicated 20 amp circuit for equipment and 15 amp circuit for miscellaneous lights through that pipe along with the 2 cat 5s, extra coax, and 2nd room speaker wires that they suggested I do. They said it was a bad idea to have a long run of romex/power in conjunction with the other wires/cables. So what is ok? The PVC pipe sits in the cavity created by an I-beam running the length of basement. So I have about 6 inches top to bottom in that cavity. Can I run some of the wires in the pipe and fish some outside the pipewill that be sufficient? Is there anyway to shield things? What sort of spacing do I need between power and other cables? If they must/should go in completely different paths I am really in trouble because the rest of the basement is already dry walled, painted, trimmed and finished. I might be able to get another complete run of PVC in that cavity. That would provide two PVC pipes sitting on top of each other. I doubt what ever the electromagnetic problems that are in question would be negated by two wall of PVC pipe. Would it? Thanks again! Rich BTW, the equipment in need referred to above is shaping up to be: Stewart Screen, Sunfire Theater Grand III or IV, and a Runco D-710 projector. Projector looks great, but the price is high when you just look at similar features and specs of other projectors. Any thoughts/advice on any or all of this equipment???

Since you all did so well earlier in the week giving me info on one center channel speaker or two and helped out with screen height (Thanks colterphoto1, Olorin, Strabo, DrWho, radiob, dougdrake) I now turn to you for round 2. Looking like my rear Heresys will need to go on their sides close to the ceiling. If all goes well stealing the idea where they are mounted in the ceiling angled down like the recent pix posted. My question is do I put the top horns in toward the center of the room or out toward the side walls? Once we establish what way they go can you give me a reason to satisfy my curiosity? Thanks, Rich

< Sarcasm > KenRatBoy, dont listen to these guysget anything BUT Klipsch. That way you can sell me your C IIs. What finish are they? The check is already made out to you where should I mail it? < /Sarcasm > Seriously, keep the C IIs and fill in the rest of your needs with the rest of the Heritage line.

Ok Lipinski, this begs the question. Did you have any life for the past couple of weeks or did you just keep refreshing your ebay search with "Klipsch Academy" trying to find a BIN auction? "Getting sleepy....can't sleep, must keep searching....Need coffee....zzzzzz" Perhaps you are for hire. There are a few items I need/want, but don't have the time or desire to keep the vigil. Seriously, congrats! I know how it is to want something bad to the point where you get obsessed over it.

Strabo, right now I am not interested in taking apart the Fortes, they have great sentimental value as I got them to replace my KG4s and have been in love with them since 92 or so. That said I would not be apposed to ripping up a different pair of Fortes to achieve the right sound. Probably not going to happen soon with all the other stuff I have going on in the HT. Interesting idea though. Guess that is what prompted my initial question about putting one forte above and one below. Would it be practical or even possible to mount one below upright and the second above and only have top one with high and mids working? If it were is there some sort of reversible process to remove the low end from one speaker something as simple as disconnecting wires from cross over to driver? I dont know much about the inner workings of speakers so any advice greatly appreciated. DrWho, I am a big fan of simpler. I never gave it any though but you are right music sounds as big as the band in my minds eye when listening to 40 inch tall speakers. Also you are right about sound at a commercial theater sounding like it is centered. I would consider raising my mains to center the horns mid screen, but then I thought I would in turn need to angel them down. This seemed to be more work then the payoff for Right/Left. I guess my thought process (flawed it might be) was that with the center it was more important to anchor the voice in the center of the screen. Thus my post last week about perforated screens. Bottom line is I want to get the best sound possible given my equipment and room. Right now I can build for speaker behind screen or two sets of centers above and below or what ever else makes sense. So far it is looking like Chorus/Forte/Chorus all upright on the floor is the winner. But I am still open to suggestions. As to screen height, I was told a general rule was 30 inches off the floor. What do the rest of you projector people do with roughly 60 to 120 inch diagonal screens? Room will be just under 8. So 96 inches minus 45 for the screen (45X 80) gives me less then 51 to play with. Lets call it 50. Subtract another 36 for a future stage (I like this look but with side speakers showing http://da-litehometheater.com) that will house sub and Forte and I have 14 inches from top of screen to ceiling. Should I raise it up more then 36? Room is roughly 13 wide (screen wall) and 16 deep. I am thinking 2 rows of 3 seats with slight rise for second row. Again, open to any suggestions out there. Thanks, Rich

Interesing, I assumed if I went with one Forte I would want it standing up so the highs/mids were still close to the bottom of the screen and oriented as originally intended. Would it make most senes if I go that route to place the woffer end away from the corner that my sub is in or does that not really matter? Thanks for the input, Rich

Nice typing, eh? Title should read TWO not tow...Hmmm, Monday.

Current speaker inventory looks to be shaping up as this: Fronts Chorus Sides Heresy Rears Heresy Sub KSW 200 The question is with the center. I will be using one Forte IIor will I? I will have a fixed screen of 45X80 and current plans are to have the screen far enough off the floor to allow for the Forte to be upright below it. About 36 give or take. This puts the screen a bit high and not a whole lot of room at the top. My concern is that dialogue will sound out of place with a large screen and speaker below (not an issue in my mind with current TV in the 35+ inch range and center on top). First, with this set up should I be concerned? Second, since I have the other speaker should I alter my set up and think about Forte above and below screen? Forte above would HAVE to be on its side due to wall height, Forte below might have to be to accommodate this. I think I would also need a way to angle top Forte down a bit. I know a safe bet would be to try it and see if I like it, but I am in the process of building walls and running wire so I really cant test it. I guess I could always run the wire and leave it there for the future, but I dont really want to change screen placement from current plans if I dont need to. I see pix of systems with centers above and below but they typically seem to be a custom built set up of a larger something at the bottom of screen and smaller something else at the top. Any reason for that? When you run two centers is there any better way then a Y cable from center output to two channel amp, then two sets of speaker wire from amp channels to speakers?

So was it a forum member??? Who is peterandlynn from ebay? I was thinking of bidding, but did not quite feel right biddings against Lapinski after 40 some odd posts about one speaker. I have an Oak Academy that has hardly seen the light of day due to the cabinet it is in behind a large speaker grill like cover. Original owner, original box and receipt from when I bought it. Not a blemish on it...look like the day it left the store. Not really interested in selling it but what do you think it would go for? If these babies get to the point where I can trade them for LaScalas, it is gone!

Looking for some guidance from people who might have a similar set up or just people who know more then me. What are the thought, pros/cons, etc. on speaker set up for the following: Room 13 Wide ( 45X80 Screen on this wall ) and 16 long. Left Rear corner has a 3X2 closet hiding the basement stair well (3 in direction parallel to screen and back wall). I do have the option of making the opening to closet shorter at about 55-60 inches and making the remaining 2 feet from shortened closet top to ceiling a shelf for possible rear/side speaker placement. I have the added problem of two French doors (6 total opening) on the left side of the room when facing the screen. This allows for a nice wide open feel if a sporting event is on for viewing from outside the HT looking in. when closed it is totally dark. Door opening starts about 4 from front wall. Meaning that on the left side of the room where the front wall meets the left wall you have corner, 4 of wall, 6 of double door, 4 of wall 2 of closet. Due to the potential for the door to swing 180 degrees from closed to open I dont really have the ability to mount a speaker on that wall because when the door swings fully open there is only about a foot or so from the edge of the open door to the closet. Not ideal I know. Side speaker on a stand that can be moved perhaps? Let the door swing open and hit the speaker? Some other idea? Speakers Chorus I, Forte II, two sets of Heresy IIs, KSW-200 Here are the options I see: 7.1 Chorus Fronts, 1 Forte Center, KSW, 2 Heresy rear, 2 Heresy sides (but how exactly to pull off the sides?) 6.1 Chorus fronts, 1 Forte Center, KSW, 1 Forte center rear, 2 Heresy sides (again side issue), Extra Heresy pair to sell, build into custom center, zone twowho knows. 5.1 Chorus fronts, 1 Heresy Center, KSW, 2 Forte rears. 5.1 Chorus fronts, 1 Forte Center, KSW, 2 Heresy rears. I like the idea that all the speaker are in the Heritage line and that the Chorus/Fortes are very similar if use as the 3 front speakers. What are the thoughts on that sub? If I go with a forte in the rear, 6.1 option above, do I take off the riser and mount it upside down so the woofer is up top and the horns are lower. I love the picture of the Heresys mounted in the ceiling that we have all seen, If I go with Heresy rears on the sides do you want the horns facing in toward each other or out toward the side walls? I am sure I will have more questions, but this is a start. Thanks to all who have helped so far, Rich

Reading through the older posts on differences between 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, etc got me a little confused. I am building out a room and figured I would at least allow for 7.1 no matter what I ended up putting in for now. I had a local high end audio company come to my house last night to look things over and give me some ideas. They suggested 6.1, but my take was that they really did not have a huge grasp on the difference...hey it is not like I do...just a feeling. Anyway been reading here and did a quick look around online and ran into this. http://dolbylabs.com/consumer/home_entertainment/roomlayout.html I seem to understand things much quicker when I see then rather then when I read them. Click on the different links below the room lay out for DD, DD-ex, prologic, etc. Simple and easy...at least for me. Hope this helps someone.

Hey, thanks for all the great info on rack rails and construction! Funny when I ordered the rails I saw the blank plates and ordered 2 thinking to myself that one at the top and one at the bottom would make it easy to keep the rails square, parallel and the correct distance while I roughed in my opening. Later I read about using the vent for basically the same idea. What do they say? Great minds think alikeor idiots seldom differ? One final construction question. Do I only need 2 rails in the front? Looking at the link to cabinet building it appears like itand that is how I have always envisioned it. However, I took a look in our server room at work and the racks of equipment all have 4 rails - 2 in the front and 2 in the back with supports running front to back for each piece of equipment to mount to. I guess my question is will a 30 pound amp with 2 screws on each side of the face plate mounted to the rack rails support all that weight? What happens when you end up with 6-8 pieces of equipment all in that rack? Surely if you are buying equipment designed to be rack mounted the face plate where the handles comes out of are designed to support the weight of the equipment, right? Am I just worrying too much? I have always liked the look of a clean, simple rack of equipment. Now I cant wait to build it.

Hello, I know this would be a huge imposition...but I am shameless so I will ask. Anyone in the Charlotte area able to help me out with shipping of a pair of Chorus? The seller wants local pick up only and does not have original boxes. Better yet, anyone taking a drive up north via 95 from that area through D.C. or Baltimore??? Obviously I would be willing to compensate you for your efforts and very very thankful. The speakers are in GASTONIA,NC if that makes the decision any easier/harder. I am into pinball machines and the pinball community on the Internet is very willing to move games around for others given the size and fragility of those old machines. I thought maybe you fellow Klipschers were into that altruistic good Karma thing too. FWIW, I have a pair of Heresys waiting for me in the Detroit area of Michigan that will need to make there way to Baltimore some time, so if I head out to get them or when my parents make the trip out I am extending the offer to pickup/deliver along the way any Klipsch speakers you guys have provide we can accommodate schedules. Thanks, Rich

Frzninvt and others, how exactly do you pull off using two speakers for center channel? Do you use a 2 channel amp and run the right wires to one and the left wires to the other? If that is true how do you feed the two channels of the amp? Some sort of "Y" cord going from the one center output from preamp to the R/L of the amp? The reason I ask is I am concerned when I have a large screen (at least large to me 45X80 92" diag.) that the center sound will not sound like it is coming from the screen but below/above if I only have one center. Actually that is what drove my post yesterday about perforated screens and placing the center behind the screen. I still like that idea but don't want to tarnish the sound or picture quality. I have a request for info out the Sound Research people. Thanks, Rich