First of all, This is my first post and I would like to start off by saying "hello" and to introduce myself.

My name is Tom, I live in Erie, PA, and I've frequented this site for a couple of years now (sounds like the start of an A.A. meeting!). My wife and I were married last May, and by last fall I was starting to sell off my equipment to save up for (and create the need for) my dream home theater system. Unfortunately, in September we had a fire and lost nearly everything and began the rebuilding process. Well, after the craziest year, that also bore good news through the birth of our first child, we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have a new home nearing completion (4 to 6 weeks away, although we've been saying that for a month now : ).

So, we’ve left the bad behind us, and we're focusing on the good ahead of us. My wife's good is the porch and fireplace she's getting. Mine, well, starts and ends with a sweet new home theater that I had to put off for a little while!

I decided to pre-wire the living room for surround sound. Of course, there were tricky points to the setup, but I worked with J.C. via email to lay it out as best as we could. My intent is to go with the Epic 80 - 500 setup (with two sets of surrounds, of course). I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to buy right off the bat, but I’m aiming high. I’ll mostly be using it for home theater use.

I guess this is where the topic name finally becomes relevant. We designed a very open floor plan. The theater room (I mean 'living' room) has a vaulted ceiling, but is wide open to both the kitchen and dining room. Also, the dining room has a 6' cased opening to the office in the front of the house. The living room is 5,555 cubic feet in volume. When adding the four rooms together it is right at 10,000 cubic feet. So, the practical amount of space that a subwoofer needs to work in is somewhere in between there.

So, would you prefer one EP500 or two LFM-1’s? I want the accuracy of the EP500, but I’m not certain it will be enough for such a large, open space.

I made a quick, simple webpage showing the theater layout with the house progress. I'm not very good at it, and I think the way I did it requires the entire page to load before displaying on the screen, so it may take a minute or more to load. It can be seen at:

http://www.moyaks.com/

If you couldn’t tell, I drew up the theater in 3D CAD in order to get a feel for it and to use as an aid in determining the volume, spacing, etc. Actually, if I did it right, the first blue CAD picture should also be a link to a really cool interactive file of the layout.

My intent is to power the system with Outlaw Audio equipment (I'm hoping to see their new releases soon).

I’ve rambled long enough. I’m excited to finally start posting here, and am looking forward to any thoughts you may have.

-Tom