Last year when i was shopping around for house, it absolutly blew my mind how hard builders and designers worked to create houses that were as hard as possible to work HT or a 2 channel rig in. (laugh)
There was one line of homes, between 250,000-400,000 i was checking out, and the livingrooms were built against HT all the way. With the popularity of surround sound, you would think they would start incorperating this stuff into thier houses as perks.
In this specific line of houses, each house had the option of coming with a complete 5.1 surround sound system with in-ceiling KEF speakers and velodyne subwoofers. Now these houses had yer typical "TV nook" built in the wall with optional equipment racks above and below. The greatest part of these HT systems is that in the middle of the wall where the TV would sit, was a massive fireplace, and the actual TV nook itself was shoved in the corner, slightly to the left and below the Left channel. The center channel was directly above the fireplace.
Im not sure how much crack the designers were smoking, but last i checked the center channel is supposed to be over the TELEVISION, NOT 6 feet to the right. Every Stinking model of home they had was set up that way.
The house i finally settled on (my ex fiancee's mothers house) is about 20 years old and far far better for accousitcs or any type of AV setup. Especially since i have been gutting and renovating the entire interior for the past 6 months.
In colorado they have the "Parade of homes" where they build incredibly nice houses and furnish them, and people can come in and check them out, and even buy em. One of these houses actually had a high end audio room built in with non-parallel walls and all the accoustical treatments, along with a nice little 50,000 stereo system (wilson&levinson). Obviously one of the people involved in that house was an audiophile and knew what he was doing.
