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The original was posted on /r/hometheater by /u/MJinMN on 2024-01-23 17:26:01+00:00.
We are in the process of building a new house and I'm trying to get some of the A/V details sorted out. We will have a large family room on the upstairs with a large TV and I will be putting together a nice home theater setup up there.
However, I would really appreciate the expert thoughts on our main floor. We will have a large, open floor plan, with a living room, kitchen and dining room all open. We are planning to have a TV in the living room over a fireplace for casual viewing. We likely won't watch any movies on this TV but might have a game on and we will definitely use speakers in this room frequently for music. So, I would like some decent speakers for music especially, but I would prefer to save the bigger dollars to spend on the upstairs HT.
So, my questions regarding the main floor...
- I am inclined to just do LRC, skip surrounds and subwoofer. Does that sound reasonable?
- Given the planned room setup, I thought a nice pair of bookshelf speakers would be a good fit?
- Again with the idea of saving the biggest dollars for the true HT, I went to Best Buy and really liked the B&W 606 S3s. They're $1100 for a pair which seemed like a decent spend. Any thoughts?
- Whichever LR speakers I ultimately go with, I assume I should just buy the matching center? The B&W 600 series center is another $900.
- My wife would like some speakers in the kitchen so that she doesn't have to turn the living room speakers up and make that room too loud for conversation. Any thoughts about how to do that? Ceiling speakers? Wireless bookshelfs? Do I need to match brands with the living room speakers?
- For this type of non-HT setup, what should I be looking for in a receiver?
- Anything else I should be thinking of?
Thank you all for any help you can give.