Background

Hello!

My parents are building a new house that we would be selling in 2 years, but I am taking my first crack at building a home theater setup. I have 2 ideas on how to set it up. Please see the picture below of our basement area. Our basement consists of a hallway, a bathroom, an office or bedroom, some sort of bar or kitchen, and a media area. I am not a big fan of the design of the basement area, since it's designed to have 2 rental suites rather than being designed for our needs. Where I live, double rental suites in a home are highly sought after. For reference, red dots are the locations of wall switches, blue for ethernet, brown for thermostat, and black for coax.

Goals

Build a 5.1 setup that could later be upgraded to a 7.2.4 within 2 years. The speaker wiring for a 7.2.4 should be in place before the insulation is put in place (which should be about 1 week from this posting). I plan on getting a 9.2 receiver and later including an amplifier for when I will proceed with the 7.2.4 setup. For the TV, it's either a 65 or 77 inch LG C2, or stepping down in quality and getting a larger TV in the same price range. There will be a custom TV cabinet where the set of ethernet outlets are.

Plan 1

The first idea is to simply place the TV where the set of ethernet outlets are. We are planning on building a cabinet there anyways and it makes the most sense. The front set of speakers wouldn't need in wall cables either.

There are a few issues however. With the couch on the opposing wall, I don't think we can do better than 5.2.2, plus the right (from the perspective of the viewer) side speaker won't be on the wall if I try to go for a 7.2.4 setup here. Also, I am concerned how the open right side would affect sound.

Plan 2

Place the TV in front of the fire escape window. There is no view outside of these windows because this basement is basically 6-7ft below ground. I can build a frame around the window with an MDF panel that can be lifted 45 degrees by using 2 piston gas springs. This will give access to the window when needed and can also help with wiring the TV. The AVR and all other inputs are still in the cabinet, but there will need to be a pipe that can route cables from the cabinet to inside the frame. This is one downside of this design as cables need to be 20 ft in length.

There will also be a 6 foot countertop or table aligned with the left wall of the 3 ft indentation as shown in the image. This way people can eat and watch TV without eating on the couches. The couch would either sit in front of the countertop or a few feet in front of it to allow proper spacing for the rear speakers.

My main concern is how that indentation in the wall will affect sound coming out of the speakers. I would assume that sound would be fine for those on the couch but sound for those on the table would be off.

Speaker & Seating Placement

I have a general idea for placement of speakers and seating. Plan A is rather straight forward. The side speakers are next to the couch. For Plan 2 I was thinking of having the sofa 12 ft back from the TV with the side speakers also being the same distance. The rear speakers would be 17 ft from the TV which would align it with the countertop. I'm also not entirely sure if it's better to have upward firing Atmos speakers placed on top of the front tower and rear bookshelf speakers, or have them mounted high. I'm avoiding in-ceiling speakers because we can't take them when we sell the house.

Shopping List

Below are the items I am considering for this build. It's a WIP and subject to change, and please offer recommendations if you have any. Prices are in CAD, and I do get discounts for items at Best Buy, so pretty much all of the speakers are half price for me. Note, I have not found a CAD price for the C2 yet. I made up this price by using the ratio of the C1 CAD and USD prices and multiplied it to the C2 USD price.

I would like to know if the Onkyo AVR and the Emotiva amp would be fine for this. I initially had the Denon X3700H on my list but the discount for the Onkyo was $600 cheaper.

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Conclusion

Plan 1 is my dad's preferred plan. Plan 2 is my preferred plan. I'm not entirely sure about the speaker placement so I would like some opinions on that. And there's some possible changes to the shopping list. I would like y'alls opinion on this. I need to finalize one of these plans and the speaker placements before I start putting wires into walls.

Pics

https://preview.redd.it/ilc5y5lm5is81.png?width=1608&format=png&auto=webp&s=056496be3d6df8f1f34eb803519b2008f4b61aa7