Another newbie with some questions (1 Viewer)

[Christian D]

OK, so here's the deal. In the new house we are building, we have a downstairs rec room that will serve as the in-home theater. I'm planning a 5.1 surround sound system backing up a large screen HDTV. The whole house is also wired with 2-RG6, 2-CAT6, and 2-fiber lines to many drops, all coming back to a rather substantial patch panel in the mechanical room. The rec room is ~15x17. There's a nitch at one end for the TV and a fireplace at the other end.

I'm a novice at this. Some questions I encounter involve whether I should route all the speaker wires to a central location behind the TV and do all the connections to the Amps, etc there, or should I route it to the patch panels (another 20-30 feet) and do all the switching there? In wall or mounted speakers? 5 speakers, or more? Ceiling or wall mounted?

The ceilings are 9 feet, the walls are drywall, and the two side walls will be insulated. If you thought it was better, I could easily have all 4 walls insulated.

I have nothing specific in mind at this time, other than I'd prefer to pre-wire now, and hide the mess.

As far as pricing is concerned, this is not a high enough priority for us to go top dollar, since we've never had it, therefore haven't missed it. As I said, right now it's only an issue of pre-wiring ... the rest can wait.

Any thoughts that you might have will be welcome.


Thanks a lot!

 

[drobbins]

Christian,
It is best to pre-wire as much as possible in the construction phase. I would avoid running extra distances and connections. It gives more opportunity for problems and signal loss. I built an in-wall equipment area and ran the wires straight to the receiver etc... If you can, try out all your equipment before installing the drywall. Much easier to change things at this time.
I prefer wall mounted speakers. The human ear listens better to sounds coming horizontally not from above.
7.1 systems are the latest in HT, but not much is available in 7.1 yet. Maybe in the future. I am running 9.2 hooked up to a 6.1 receiver.
I insulated all 4 walls and the ceiling. I don't know if it helps much with sound but the theater in the basement is much warmer now.
Good luck,
Dave