Another vote for the 500. Dennis, the two 350s will give you some flexibility in dealing with horrible room problems, but the single 500 will give you the same output AND will do a much better job of handling the very low notes. I don't think you are going to have enough room problems to need dual subs for that reason, and IMO a single 500 will be more satisfying than 2 350s.

Regarding the rest of the treatments, everything we are talking about here is fancier than your typical good home theater, ie none if this is "stuff you have to do". As long as you avoid horrid dimensions all of the other important things are easy to do at any time afterwards, eg put down a nice rug or a couple of wall hangings if the room is too live. You are asking all the right questions -- get the wiring worked out in advance (don't forget the projector), figure out where your equipment is going to go. Put a bit of effort into the lighting -- a few $$ and planning here can really make the room look spiffy -- and make sure the room can be REALLY dark when watching a movie.

If you are trying to build the ultimate home theater you really do need to be thinking about all this stuff at construction time, but very few of us have those kind of rooms. If you want to see some really cool rooms, though, go to the Rives Audio site at www.rivesaudio.com.

EDIT -- the one place where planning ahead can help is making the treatments "invisible" if your family might have problems with the appearance of some of the bigger treatments like bass traps. At the very least it might be good to identify a few spots on the back and side walls (near corners) and ceiling (between screen and first listening position) where you *could* cut away drywall in the future and stuff the space between the studs/joists full of insulation.

If you are going to have a drywall ceiling try to keep an area duct-free that you can chop into later. Try to walk through occasionally with a video camera during construction if you can -- still pics are good but you never seem to have a picture of the wall you are interested in a year later ;(

If you can keep wiring and HVAC out of the first pair of studs in the corners that will let you hide bass traps in the future. Randy just finished building a pair of big bass traps -- he can probably comment on how "WAF-friendly" the results were.

Last edited by bridgman; 08/01/06 04:06 AM.

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