re: O-T’s opinion on open floor plan houses

My downstairs is a little over 1500 sqft and only my office and the powder room are “closed off”

Our formal dining is a playroom and our kitchen, living and breakfast area are all open. I like it. We have people over a lot and it’s great for entertaining.

I also took out the 3 windows in our breakfast area and put a 10 foot slider that opens to our back patio which makes it awesome for parties and get togethers

If you’d like to entertain and normally host holidays, it’s great

We have a huge open downstairs with the living room and kitchen, and it’s really nice when you’re hosting a party and can just walk into the kitchen to grab a drink or food and still see the TV and have conversation with someone from the living room.

Our living room also opens up to the patio so I can’t imagine doors separating all of that

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Would make it impossible to one day do the Scooby Doo thing where they all go in and out of different doors while being chased by a ghost.

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Ergo Hanna-Barbera > Frank Lloyd Wright

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you’d like to entertain and normally host holidays, it’s great

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Same, we have a crawfish boil every year and this past year we had about 75 people and between the yard, patio and the open space inside it’s easy to accommodate that many people

This. I am in spec homes and buyers prefer open by a landslide.

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Gotta embrace the floor stands. Then it’s easy.

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I just dont even think that would work for my set up. The main walking aisle is right behind the our seats. I think they would be in the way. I thought about doing some ceiling speakers but rears have been hard to figure out.

My set up]

My uncle Don worked on rockets at LTV in Dallas. He also was a trapeze artist when he was young. He was super smart,. and he designed his own house in Dallas. It was on a downward sloping dead end street, and the house had seven levels.

It was a late 70's house and when he passed, a young couple bought it with the intent of completely removing and replacing it. Once they got into the house, however, they realized what a great design it was and they kept it.

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I just dont even think that would work for my set up. The main walking aisle is right behind the our seats.

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You don’t really want your surrounds very far behind the main listening position in a 5.1 setup anyway. This is what Dolby recommends but you can get away with much closer to 90 degrees without impacting too much:



7.1 is different but I think 7.1 is overrated TBH. I’d rather use 7 amplification channels for 5.1.2 than 7.1.

That said, I admit that’s a tricky room in a bunch of different ways. You could probably make it work with floor mounted bipole speakers but routing the wires would be a pain in the nuts after looking at your space. Ceiling speakers are tough because of that recess in your ceiling. (Also ceiling speakers don’t make great surrounds to begin with.)

I would probably wall-mount above your patio door assuming you can also wall-mount at the same height on the opposite wall (hard to tell from pics). Consider ordering mounts with adjustable arms so you can angle them down toward listening position, as firing them parallel to the ceiling will create a lot more reflection and make them harder to localize. Surrounds generally shouldn’t be that high but speaker placement is always a game of compromise unless you’re in a perfect dedicated theater room.

I was also about to recommend moving your sub to the left corner but now I see you’re running stereo subs. In all honesty, you’ll quite often get better sound with one sub in a corner if you can get away with it (less phase cancellation and you get an output boost from the corner) but I get the appeal.

Lived in both, I cannot go back to a house that has everything sectioned off. Open FTW

I hate that when I'm trying to watch TV the women are in the kitchen making a lot of noise and yapping their asses off.
I turn up the TV so I can hear...
They talk louder.
Frustrating as hell.

Make sure you have a dedicated media room away from all of the noise.