My wife finally got tired of all my A/V gear being out so prominently in the living room, and after all these years of being into this stuff, I actually agreed with her. So as much as it pains me to say, I redesigned the system with clean and more contemporary aesthetics being the primary design parameter vs performance. I got it all done on my day off, before she got home from work, her reaction made it 100% worth it.

Before:



During:



After:








The Monitor Audio S8 floor speakers and center channel will be the next to go, I ordered 3 Monitor Audio WSS430 in-walls for LCR:

https://www.monitoraudio.com/en/product-ranges/super-slim/wss430/

Also adding matching Atmos in-ceiling speakers, whenever I feel like crawling around in the attic to fish wires again.  I'm gonna remove all my various speaker jacks and terminals from the walls and patch the drywall as well. Overall, I am very happy with how it came out. I will update after I get the in-walls in next week. Cheers!

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That is super cool man. I can only dream of having skills like that. I’m in the same situation but in an even smaller space.

It takes a few minutes of watching a YouTube video.  Yes, the first time you cut into drywall is a little scary but after that it's nothing.  You know you can patch it.

Our new house had a kitchenette that has become the media room.  I had to remove counter height outlets and patch those holes.  The last owners had removed a 3rd A/C unit and left an empty return vent in the ceiling.  I wanted to use it for a quad 18" infinite baffle subwoofer but got overruled due to the close proximity of the neighbors.  I helped my painter patch that hole.  My wife OKed the standard, box subs but doesn't realize how big a 48" tall sub with a 21" driver will actually be.

While certainly not the most complex install I've done, in all fairness to those who might attempt something like this, it was much more involved than cutting a hole in the drywall. Woodworking skills more than A/V knowledge if I'm honest. You don't see it, but the rack and sub are in an enclosure that was designed and constructed in the shop then inserted into the opening, plumbed and fastened to the framing before being trimmed. This unit needed to be rock solid, designed to fit two different sized components, each with their own considerations; the sub, and the Middle Atlantic rack/shelf system, which needs precise finished opening dimensions and must also be perfectly square. It required milling out the black trim insert with radius corners for the subwoofer and positioning the sub (securely) inside the enclosure so it would be centered in the opening. The subwoofer section of the enclosure is glued/screwed 3/4" Baltic birch, lined with foam, with isolated blocks for the sub feet to sit on. This means I can pound the shit out of that sub (SVS SB-3000) and not hear a single rattle or vibration in the structure. This project also required less fun stuff like cutting into existing electrical and wiring new outlets, as well as removing baseboard without damaging it or the walls and channeling the drywall behind the baseboard to get the A/V wires from one corner of the room to the other. If you can get all that from a few minutes watching a YouTube video and achieve a similar result, God has blessed you. Even though (for me) this was an easy one, it took many years of doing custom A/V to attain the skillset needed to envision, design and fabricate something like this in a day and pull it all off without a hitch, not to mention having a decently equipped workshop with the ability to cut accurate panels from full sheets of material, and lots of big clamps lol.

With that said, I would be happy to assist anyone here with their AV projects or plans in any way that I can. Cheers.

Got the in-walls installed and patched everything up. I was skeptical of the speakers at first because of their size but turns out they are surprisingly loud and articulate little units, and the ribbon tweeters are very smooth without any harshness. Very nice solution when paired with a decent sub. Now the tv sticks out from the wall more than anything else lol. I think a LG Gallery OLED sitting flat on the wall would be approaching perfection.

holy smokes that is sweet.     very nice work,  OP.

OP, that is impressive work. Very smoothe looking indeed. I’m house shopping here lately and I’m desperately looking for an adequate home theater room which can accommodate dual SVS subs and most of their ultra offering. Gonna have to hire someone to run all the wiring and what not. One day…

What differences did you note between the systems in staging, depth, etc.

The in-walls do a better job of pulling the sound back into a more cohesive and convincing soundstage behind the display, if that makes sense. Once I ran Dirac the sub was blended in nicely and hits solidly right in the middle. It doesn't pull mid-bass into the corner, so it sounds like its coming from the mains. LFE still shakes under me like it always did. I think powerful sealed subs pair very well with smaller mains like these. The overall effect is kind of like the wall itself is one big full range, multi-channel speaker, but you don't see anything at all with the lights down. Really cool effect and it sucks you right in.

Awesome.