Another forum, another membership

Thanks for granting me access to these discussions - I will echo what I've read from dedicated members of this forum: It is a very welcoming, friendly, and informative place unlike some of the other "big name" boards out there. Not once, in several hours of perusing, have I seen any bashing, hate, or rude immaturity in any of the threads. That is so refreshing.

I live in Orange County with my boyfriend. We are renters now with a super entry-level setup in a small room that used to be our office. We converted it into our movie room (hesitant to call it a theater given it's shoe-horned size).

We are thinking of relocating and buying our own home in the next year. Ascend has quickly risen to the top of my list as the go-to brand to acquire for the dedicated space I plan to have when we move. Tentatively thinking of doing Horizon's all across the front stage, but we will have to wait and see what the room will end up looking like.

If you want a brief history of my coming into the AV world, read on (I tried to make it in a spoiler tag, but no luck). Current gear in my signature. Thanks for reading!

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I'd always dabbled with having sound equipment. At one time, I was using an RCA something-or-rather receiver (which didn't have a working center or FR preout) linked through a Sony HTIB AVR (which ONLY had a working center and FR preout) running an almagation of speakers, ranging from some no-name sub I had in an old car to a hacked-up set of Insignia satellites to a series of AE 3311's I got from an uncle...it was kind of a mess.

When I first moved out to the OC, I had some fun, and put this together:

...which mostly consisted of almost everything I mentioned above.

In my 4th year of college, I decided I wanted a kick-butt HT system. This was before I knew anything about true AV, obviously, or my first HT room wouldn't have looked like this:

But it was my first legitimate system. The TV was a pass-along when I moved out of home; it was a Vizio plasma-something-heavy. I had just picked up an Onkyo 636 and a set of Monoprice's basic 5.1 HTIB. I was using the AE 3311's as mains and a pair of old Sony rears from an HTIB. I also purchased MP's 12" 250w sub, making the system a "full-immersive" 5.2.2 experience. Now per that photo, it looks like I was running 7.2.2...but I'm not exactly sure how Oh well, it was over a year ago and I've moved on!

So when I finished college we moved, and upgraded some things a bit.

Namely the decor, TV, and additional audio gear. This system was in our new living room, which measured roughly 14'x17'x7'9". I was still using the 636, but the TV was a Polaroid 55" 4K, and I purchased Onkyo's up-firing modules (mounted above the L and R). I did away with the 3311's as active mains and instead turned them into the entertainment center - they act as a shelf that everything sits on! Inside the upper part of the housing was the MP Center speaker, the 636, a Sony BDPS6500, PS4, MP 4 ch speaker selector (for switching between 5.2.2 or 7.2), Rocketfish's Wireless Rears transmitter, charging docks, games and BDs, and a dual 4" fan with thermal sensor and temp readout to keep things cool-ish. The back of the housing was open, but there were lots of cables back there The upper face was hinged to fold down. On the floor left and right were the MP subs (both HTIB models...the little satellites were starting to stack up FAST).

The rears were mounted above the bar, which faced the TV.

I had to build out the beam and "soffit" or wall or whatever you want to call it to help conceal the wire path, which ran down the support beam and under the bar top, where the Rocketfish wireless receiver was hidden. It was painted to match the rest of the walls.


By the way, everything I make, from the wire path cover to the subwoofer enclosures to the entertainment center, is all just balsa wood. The elements that cover speakers that wrapped in AT fabric.

So why the move to a smaller room with MORE speakers? Well, we live in a condo on the second floor. Technically, beneath us is just garages, however where the living room was situated just happened to be over a garage that was converted into a living space. We were always worried about noise and being too loud for the neighbors downstairs, thus we never really took anything to 11. In a year there haven't been any complaints yet, and they seem like nice enough people....but I really want to go to 11...and not hear an complaints from it (except from my boyfriend maybe).

We had a second bedroom (the smallest of the rooms) that was used as an office/transition space for my decor projects. Big desk, lots of room, I tricked out some IKEA floating shelves and made it look very pretty. Upon his suggestion, we moved the AV gear into this office so that it would be a dedicated movie/entertainment space for just the two of us.