MatrixDweller

I the easiest way would be to use 2x2s and frame the wall. Inside the 2x2 space use 2" rigid mineral wool or fiberglass (or use 2x4 rotated). You could then cover it with fire resistant burlap or other fabric (in the color of your choosing). The insulation and the lack of drywall in front of it will help deaden the sound (drywall reflects high frequencies). I don't think it would meet code so if you're having it inspected you might want to ask someone who knows about building codes in your area.

Styrofoam doesn't absorb sound very well. It's is a closed cell foam so it doesn't trap anything. It's better than nothing (maybe) but by far poorer than mineral wool or fiberglass batts or rigid panels. When sound hits mineral wool or fiberglass it gets trapped inside the fibers and bounces around a bit taking the energy out of the wave. With Styrofoam the sound will bounce off and/or vibrate right through it. Styrofoam is really only excellent for insulating against heat and resists water. It's also pretty flammable and will give off toxic fumes when burned so it has to be covered when used as insulation. Mineral wool on the other hand is non-combustible and water resistant and adds fire-resistance to a wall when used.

I think in the future higher pixel count LCD projectors will for sure come on the market. They will have a higher pixel count so that they can upsample the 1080p images to 2160p or whatever to give a crisper image without any SDE. I don't think we'll see any on the market for a ehile yet as 1080p LCDs have not been stretched to their limits yet.

Although Denon makes some great players they are probably the least likely to impact the HD DVD Bluray battle. Their players are ultra high end and cater to maybe 10% of the market. The other 90% wants a sub $200 player that does just an adequate job. Those are the peole that went into Best Buy and bought the biggest HDTV that cost the least amount of money. The manufacturers that will impact the HD race will be LG, RCA, and the slew of garbage Chinese makers that no one has ever heard of. Which ever format offers to make the manufacturer the most money will win in the end.

You could get that resolution from a HTPC that was upscaling anything. 1080p would look pretty good quadrupled I bet but it would take a lot of processing power and RAM to do so. If a 2160p source was available: Figure that a video card does 32 bits per pixel. There are 3840 x 2160 = 8,294,400 pixels then x 32 bits would be 265,420,800 bits of total information or 33,177,600 bytes or ~31.6 Megabytes per image. Now 24 frames per second would be about 760MB / second being processed and shot at the screen. Ultra SCSI 640 can do bursts of up to 640MB/second but not sustained at that rate. So you would need to copy your video to an Ultra SCSI 640 RAID 0 array in order for it to be even read off the drive fast enough to keep up at 24fps. Now try 60fps and you're looking at needing a dozen drives. Ultra-640 drives are pretty hard to come by and cost a fortune. A HTPC that could play prestored 2160p video would probably end up costing over $50,000 and would probably need a least a 10u high server box since the hard drives would have to be inside to get the full speed out of the drives. I'd love to build you one...what's your number? lol

You could always get some maple veneer and redo your other speakers. The iron on stuff is actually really easy to apply. It would be a lot of though because you would want to disassemble the speakers (ie: take everything out so you just have the enclosure) before you veneer, stain and/or varathane them. Here's a fitting link that shows some work in action http://www.dcchomes.com/Heresy.html. Nice too that they're Heresys too. I can't say I like his choice of veneer and maple wouldn't chip along the edges like he had happen. He's just an amateur and they still look fairly decent.

Painting real wood or veneer is such a waste. Anyway if you painted it right you wouldn't match the black ash finishes anyway because maple has a lot less grain to it and the paint would cover it up anyway. Even if you carefully sanded them and stained them black the grain would still not match (but they'd be black). I'd really recommend against painting or re-staining them unless utterly necessary due to the fact that you're not a professional and you could possibly ruin your speaker's finish irrevocably.

Portable @ 800W w/Cerametalic woofer? A good 800W subwoofer is going to have a huge magnet in it and that will mean it will be portable in the sense that you could strap it to you back or put it on wheels with leash so you could take it for a walk. The Klipsch RT-12d is 800W and weighs over 70lbs. I'm sure if you replace all the wood and mdf with plastic you might be able to shave off 5-10 lbs but the enclosure would probably break from the force of the driver and would sound crappy as heck. Maybe 800W pmpo would be possible but not 800W RMS (800W pmpo might be 8W RMS if you're lucky).

TOSHIBA and NEC but they haven't been released yet. I think the hold up is the approval process by the DVD Forum. Yes DVD Forum, the same guys that brought DVD to life are behind HDDVD. HD-DVD is based on the same technology that DVD is except for the fact it uses a smaller wavelength of laser. That's why it's natively backward compatible and easy to do so. Th efirst gen HDDVD players were where as the first gen blueray were not all backward compatible with DVD. See the link. http://www.hddvdprg.com/eng/hddvd/hddvd_3.html

Is the crawlspace under your room heated and away from the elements? If so then you could just go with regular speaker wire. The inwall is expensive because of it's jacket. The jacket might make the wire easier to pull because it makes the cable stiffer. It adds nothing to it's performance. Walls/Ceilings will stop fire from spreading quickly to other rooms when designed properly. A non-in-wall rated wire could produce toxic smoke and burn at a faster rate which could cause the fire to spread faster. Where I live you only have to worry about using plenum rated low voltage wire when running wires through existing HVAC ducts in home construction/renovation. Commercial construction has to use fire rated wire however. I ran Carlon Grey PVC conduits to my side and rear surrounds. If I ever need to replace the 12 gauge OFC wire (maybe when I sell the house), I can easily fish wire in and out of them. As a side benefit it will protect my wires from water, fire and rodents. If your crawlsapace has a dirt floor and/or is un-insulated and/or exposed to the elements you should consider PVC conduit.

I have only heard the 12d in action so I can't really comment. I would assume by the specs that 12d has more output than the 10d and goes a bit deeper. I can't beleive they would have just a RW10d on display with RF83's. Are you sure it wasn't the RSW10d? That ones a step up from the RW12d. You'd best post a thread in the powered sub section. "The Ear" knows everything.

Regarding HD-DVD drives in laptops and desktops: Software producers have just started to put their stuff on DVD. It will be a long time before they start cutting HD-DVD versions of their software. The main purchaser of laptops (and desktops for that matter) is business and not consumers. There isn't much business software out there that even requires a DVD version let alone HD-DVD or Bluray. Games and movies are really the only commodity that could use the extra disc space at this time. The one advantage HD-DVD has over Bluray is the fact that it's much cheaper to produce and more easily backward compatible with DVD and CD formats since it is just an evolution of DVD. If the PC market is to kill Bluray it will be because HD-DVD-R drives (with the help of hackers) will enable piracy.

They are not available yet but Toshiba and NEC have one. Hitachi-LG plan on releasing a hybrid player too. I'd think that a lack of a burner would be good incentive to the movie studios to side with HD-DVD.

Great advice on the RS3's. I think I'm going to go basic 5.1 at first now and run conduits for the rears. When I go for 7.1 I'll probably get a pair of RF82's for fronts and move the 81's to the rear. My other option would be to get a pair of RS3 II's or RS35's for the side surrounds and maybe get another RW12d sub when the funds become available.

Your Pioneer Elite has HDMI 1.2a which allows linear PCM to be read from the cable. I think in the player you need to set the audio output as PCM rather than bitstream. I have a Toshiba HDA2 and a Denon 3805 (no HDMI) and pass the DTS bitstream to my receiver. It sounds great, although it seems muted slightly compared to regular DD or DTS output. I too am wondering how much better the new lossless formats are. I have a hard time telling the difference between MP3's encoded higher than 256Mbps and the original CD. To open up this discusson further, has anyone done a side by side comparison of Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus and plain Dolby Digital? Are the new formats really worth it, outside of their better white paper comparison?

Depends on how old the kids are I guess. Toddlers can wreck anything given the opportunity and time.

If I mount the RB81 for the right rear surround above the door it would still hang a little below the top of the door. It would work but wouldn't be pretty. I was almost thinking of scrapping the double door idea and placing a single door where the double door is. My wife likes the french door idea though and might not want to sacrifice it for "one of my damn speakers". My thinking is that it would give a little room for a small acoustic treatment in the corner, give room for the right rear surround and one solid core door with acoustical seals is cheaper and better from an audio standpoint than french doors. See the attached revised plan of rear wall. Is this much better?

I was thnking about dipoles and maybe placing them in between the first and second row. I probably won't get WAF on it so it will probably have to wait. For now I'll need to put the RB81's I have somewhere between the first and second row. Should I put them right beside the second row pointing at the listening position in the front row? Or should I put them behind the second row and aim them at the primary listening point? I don't want the second row to suffer too much. I think at first I will do 6.1.

Ditto on the flourecent lights. They can't normally be dimmed. You want to be able to control the ambient light and not either have it on or off. With pot lights you can plan how much light the room will have and can segregate the light into different dimable circuits. The cans aren't too expensive and run from $10 to $30 depending on size and type. It is a bit of extra wiring but well worth it. If you are having a walk behind wall where your gear will be why not go for a perforated screen and mount the center behind the screen. That is the best position for the center (as long as the perf screen is a good one). If that's not an option it's recommended that the tweeters of the fronts and center be at the same height (or close to it). The other option is to mount the center above or below the screen and tilt it up/down towards the listening position. As for the speakers being slightly ahead of the center. That doesn't really matter too much. Again in an ideal set up the right, left and center should be equidistant to the listening position. This would place them slightly forward of the center. Drop ceilings are convenient and easier to put up than drywall but like michael posted, it can rattle a bit and will if you plan on getting RF83's and a bigger sub down the road.

I'm building a dedicated home theater room that will include 2 rows of seating. Where should I place the side surround speakers? I also have a bit of dilema in that the back of the room will have a large double door to one side (I could make it a single door however). This sort of leaves me with either placing two rear surrounds very close together or just going with one speaker. Here is a drawing of the room with some rough measurements:

Yeah Rob Zombie's stuff is pretty polished. Astrocreep has an awesome enveloping sound. There's so much going on but everything is detailed. Fear Factory is pretty good too. Fear Factory - Obsolete is heavy but very refined. I'd say out of any album Obsolete stresses my system the most (in a good way). It's meant to be played loud.

For a good DIY QRD check out this site. http://www.mhsoft.nl/Diffusor2.asp I plan on making a few for my listening room...eventually

To answer your first question...anything will be better than your high distortion Kenwood. Some people say that Yamaha can be bright but I say that would change once you auto-calibrate your speakers. The RX-V2700 is a very impressive receiver and compares to any of the other manufacturers models in that price range. I'm looking to upgrade in the near future but am going to hold off until HDMI 1.3 receivers become available. When buying off Ebay or anywhere else online you have to consider what would happen if my product needed service. Typically you would need to ship your receiver back to the seller on Ebay at your expense or go through the manufacturer directly. The beneift of buying from a local store is that you can bring it back in and sometimes they will even give you a loaner or replace the unit outright. The chances that your unit will need service is a gamble you would have to take. Some manufacturers will only honor waranty claims if their products were purchased from an authorized dealer. You can find authorized dealers on Ebay though. One thing to check is whether or not the item is 'B' stock, or refurbished. A lot of the time refurbished items carry a lesser waranty. B Stock items that were messed up in production could have other things wrong with them that weren't caught in QA. They are usually OK but would stand a greater chance of post sale failure than a normal item. Your local retailer probably can't match the prices shown on Ebay but you can usually talk them down a bit. The smaller retailers especially.

The reason why SACD adn DVD Audio have failed is because most consumers don't care about multi channel music. Most listeners use factory car stereos, MP3 players and 2 channel home stereos. THe other factor is that artists aren't using descrete sound channels to their fullest. Most DVDA/SACD I've listened to just matrix the sound to give it more of a live feel. To tell you the truth most don't sound much better than my Denon's 5/7 channel stereo or Dolby Pro Logic II mode. The thing that will kill HD-DVD and Bluray will be the fact that DVD players that incorporate up-samplers may be more than adequate for most watchers. Sure Dolby True HD and DTS Master HD are nice, but the majority of DVD watchers are still either listening in stereo or have a $500 HTIB. The fidelity of HD audio doesn't mean as much to them as it does your average Klipsch owner. That being said, Bob with his 50" Plasma knows that SD looks like crap, DVDs look a little better, and HD looks best. If they can get close to HD quality from an up-sampler for $100 it's probably good enough for them. He probably has to deal with his wife after spending $3000 on a TV. Adding $500-$1000 for a HD player would probably see him doing some time in the dog house. That's not to mention the fact that there isn't crap out on HD-DVD or Bluray. Blockbuster and Jumbo Video by me have about 4 feet dedicated to each format and typically have one or two copies of each title.

Would you want to wait an hour or more to download a HD title each time you want to watch it. Or worse yet have it streamed to you so when the servers get busy you would have to stop watching in the middle of your movie so that it could fill the buffer back up. Hard media is independent of internet connection quality and speed.