I'm planning on using a separate LFE sub/center cabinet.
Keep your cabinets simple and save $ and time. Matching and getting close to a finish are two very different things. The prob. W/ rosewood is that it is not sustainably harvested. As such, I refuse to contribute its demise
I certainly understand the value of keeping things simple, but these aren't going in a dedicated theater. They're going in the living room, and my wife doesn't appreciate the look of electronics and speakers dominating the room. She finds the rs450's look nice enough that she doesn't mind them, but if I go back to big flat boxes again I'll likely have a fight on my hands. Beyond this, as somebody who can't build cabinets myself, if I'm going to do DIY (or semi-diy as the case may be) I'm going to do it right and build something I'll love for a long time. It may be naive to think the upgrade bug will never bite again, but I can be fairly sure that if it does, it will be because my budget has increased dramatically. If that happens soon it's a good problem to have. That being said, I'm not thinking of trying to do something crazy. I know that curved sides isn't in the equation without paying a lot of money and ruining the bang-for-your buck quotient. I've been looking around for designs I think are attractive but
relatively simple. It's surprising how much variation there is even in simple tower designs, given different ways the front baffle is done.
Question: if doing a sealed version rather than the transmission line is there any real difference in performance using a T-M-M arrangement rather than an M-T-M? I was toying with the idea of a slight slant to the the front, and I suspect it wouldn't make sense if the tweeter weren't on top. I find that I like the sound of speakers that use such time alignment measures OR sitting with my ears below the tweeter on speakers that don't. MTM designs tend to do this with a "3D" or multilayered baffle that places the tweeter(s) behind the woofers.
As far as the rosewood goes, I'm not necessarily hard set on that. In fact, as I understand it the "south american rosewood" that AV123 uses isn't
exactly rosewood but a member of the same family with a desirable look and is able to be farm raised. I guess there are a bunch of different woods that get called rosewood for one reason or another. The point is there may be something else that looks nice that can be stained similarly that isn't exactly rosewood. Of course I could go a different direction altogether but I remain concerned about mismatching for any length of time. My decision as to whether to try to come close to my existing finish or do something different will likely depend on how quickly I think I can transition all 5 speakers.
