I'm finally starting to really put down on paper what I'm going to do with my dedicated space. The biggest thing I'm struggling with right now is what to do about the front three speakers. I feel like it's really important to have the center channel behind the screen (not sure why I feel so strongly). Problem is, this almost definately means I have to do in walls (at least an in wall center), because my room is only 18 ft from front to back and I want to do two rows of seating. I don't really want to put up a false wall an extra 2 feet in front of the actual wall.

I'm freaking out a bit because while I'm do believe that for theater applicaitons, in walls can match the sound of in rooms, to get that performance is VERY expensive. I'd rather save the money, or get much better sound for my money with in room speakers, but I'm just not sold on having the center channel sit below the screen.

So I figure I have three options:
1. in wall speakers
2. In room speakers with center below screen
3. in room (on wall) speakers with screen only as far from the front wall as the depth of the center channel speaker.

I need some help processing this decision. I'm heading to the shops on Monday to listen to a wide range of speakers, but honestly, I'm not confident I will actually get a good sampling of what each situation would cause.

Thoughts?

Have you listened to any theaters with the center above or below screen? I have gone above in my last couple rooms (due to my projectors offsets) and angle the center down (or you could angle up from below). The difference in height is barely noticable to me. I played around with the dual center channel idea a couple years ago, when processors started coming out with an option for dual centers. I ended up preferring one center...but that is something that you could play around with.

Inwalls don't hold a candle to good quality freestanding speakers. I have both (inwalls in our bedroom theater). I am fairly happy with the inwalls, and think they sound great for what they are. I say fairly as I know I could get much better sound out of similar priced freestanders.

I recently seen a shoot out in a guys theater.. B&W 605's aginst JBL on wall Studio series L820 or something like that (I can get the exact model if interested) and I will be darned if using room EQ wizard the JBL on walls took em in almost every performnce catagory.

So in short? For convienience? The JBL studio on walls will be hard to beat at any price but he stated they were not cheap. Like $500 a pair or so I think.

Quality in-walls can deliver all the performance you would expect out of floorstanding speakers. They are just typically more expensive for a given level of performance. Check out PSB's CW series, and Triad if you want ot go that route.

I've had triad in walls before and liked them very much. Problem is I can get the same level of performance for 25 to 50 percent of the cost....