best place for designing room w/ ur equip

Tmsorosk, don't mistaken a decorator for a designer. In my former life as an architect, I had worked with some good acoustic engineers on auditorium projects where we collaborate to achieve good aesthetics without compromising on acoustics.

FrankC

Designers are far more interested in aesthetics than sound quality. The wife nearly had me talked into letting these characters design are sound room when we bought a new house. Wow was I glad when they left, it was good for a laugh anyway, wife was in a snit for a while.

Are you looking more for someone to design you a system or the room? I had spoken to many when I was trying to design my room from the scratch. It was disappointing that when I talked about design, pretty much all of them were thinking of just sticking aftermarket room treatment pieces on the walls.

I told them that I want to either avoid using any of them, or incorporate them as part of the aesthetic design of the room, but I did not want those elements to stick out like a sore thumb. Pretty much all of them gave me a blank stare and didn't know what I was talking about. The only one that even understood what I was talking about was a professional acoustician who designs music halls and recording studios. He was gracious to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to me as a favor for a mutual friend. His fee starts at $50k.....

But if you are looking for someone to "fix" problems in an existing room, and aesthetics is of no concern, most of these guys will do.

There is a difference between a good listening room vs. a good HT room. Most of the guy designing you an HT room will want to absorb excess energy from your speakers/subs. But I think for Audio, you want to keep the room a bit more livelier.

Good luck,
FrankC

i would like it to be more of a true home theater style. room is approx 20x17.
ceilings are 8 ft

ill look around and test some other people out...in walls are not for me.
tru audio speakers is what is was trying to sell me on....i never even heard of them.

If your looking for agreement you should find it here. I don't use HT myself but those in walls are rarely ever as good as freestanding speakers. The typical HT installer is so used to demands over unobstrusive aesthetics that they probably don't know how to cleanly install anything else. Stay your ground, it sure makes upgrading a lot easier and you won't have holes in your walls to patch up if you want to change your speakers.

Are their any other home theater installers in your area?
A good installer should always take in account what you the customer wants, after all you are paying for it.

I would talk with other companies about what you want from your home theater and I sure you can find some company willing to work with what you want.

When you say home theater, are you talking about a true home theater with theater style seating and custom walls and all the works or is this just a room with a couch and TV and surround speakers?

Because if it's the latter you could probably just do it yourself, you already have the speakers you want. You just need to figure out your budget and then start auditioning different components like processor, blu-ray, Tv, and amps. Your budget will determine what you can spend and should not be to hard to set up on your own.