This is a system we designed pretty much from scratch. It started by finding a small retirement house with a room that could be converted to a listening room/home theater. This proved to be quite a challenge since home theaters were almost unheard of in 1986, the year this home was built.

Removing a door & window, and covering what remained with a wooden wall made this mostly-rectangular room a good place to start. The old coat closet behind the right speaker now houses the turntable [sandbox platform] and stores vinyl LPs. The door is padded with acoustical foam and covered with a black long-fiber cloth to aid in corner resonance absorption.

This room dimensions and accompanying large TV screen literally dictated the maximum size [and their position to a great degree] of the speakers. Although the brand names and models of the gear in our system appear, know that none [yes, none] are not of original design. All have been updated, improved, and/or redesigned in some regard. I'm an EE and the first thing I do after buying something is to take it apart to see what cost-reduction methods were used to increase profit margins. The next step is to undo these compromises and give the gear the opportunity to be what the original design engineer hoped it to be.

Speakers are dipoles modeled after the old Infinity RS-1B using a single amplifier in an all-passive design. The woofers are not active but rather passive bass-reflex design with rear mass-loaded slot ports.

The subwoofer does have its own amplifier [behind the L channel speakers] but the rest of the system is designed to run off of one stereo amplifier.

The equipment rack is designed to accommodate the equipment in the space remaining between the speakers. It is constructed from 1.5" laminated bamboo sheets using 3"x3" legs also constructed from this same bamboo. 1/2" threaded rods run through the center of the legs fastening everything together.

There is a large diffuser behind the equipment rack, a gift from a friend for helping him upgrade the crossover network in his otherwise excellent Vapor Audio speakers. What cannot be seen is the acoustic treatment behind the wall-mounted TV, the hiding place of a very nasty room resonance.

Wall-mounted tapestries conceal the other room absorbers flanking the speakers. A sculptured rug on the right wall works very well as does the tapestry on the left wall just above the subwoofer. Artwork also contains absorbers and are gapped 1/2" from the wall.

The woofer boxes are still a work in progress. The large concrete pedestals provide the appropriate height for these boxes while waiting for the final cabinet design to appear.

The television is a Sony XBR-85X900H, an 85" 4k set that provides some pretty nice resolution for 4K movies and Over-the-Air content. Our HDHomeRun 4k OTA recorder connects to our Sylology 1515+, a 24Tb server. This server is also used for streaming of audio files and stores our ripped [MKV] 1k and 4k movies.

Explanations of modifications to each of the components are included in their individual descriptions.

Oh, BTW, this system is entirely powered by the sun.