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

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Yea, I just had one 3.1, for a while then got the second sub and put it on the left. That sofa hurts some but it’s not as close as it looks.

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The sofa won’t hurt the sub at all. Bass (and particularly sub-bass) is omnidirectional unless you have a huge line array. You don’t need line of sight to your subs. Mine is underneath an end table, out of sight.

You also don’t get much/any stereo imaging from subs. The real advantage to dual subs is being able to space them more equally with the listening positions, since SPL will be a function of distance and you can’t usually place a sub right in the middle of the room. The downside is that you get a “power alley” down the middle of the room with dead zones to the sides where the two subs cancel each other out. But with the seating layout in your room, I think it’s one of the cases where dual subs actually work out.

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My towers (SVS Prime Pinnacles) do not have any bass.

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What?? Those things have 3x 6.5” woofers and are rated down to 29 Hz. They should be more than capable of producing a fair amount of sub-bass. If you can’t get bass out of them it’s probably due to an AVR setting. I know on Denon AVR’s you have to set your speaker format to “large” AND set the output to “LFE+main” to get a true full-range output on L/R channels. Not sure what the setting would be on your AVR.

All of that said there’s nothing wrong with a 3.x setup. Anything with a decent dedicated center channel will be way better than a soundbar. I will offer one more potential solution though - suspending surrounds from the ceiling. You can use a bracket like this, and angle them down. Not as unobtrusive as in-ceiling speakers but more flexible in placement. If you use grey or white speakers with light-colored wire they won’t be too noticeable.

A few options to consider:
Paradigm MilleniaOne
Polk Audio Signature Elite ES10
Cambridge Audio Minx Min 22
Cambridge Audio Minx Min 12
Bowers & Wilkins M-1
Klipsch Reference Premiere RP-140D

The smallest of these are like 0.5-1.5 pounds. Some can be ceiling mounted without any additional hardware.