I am happy with just my polks and a cheap onkyo receiver (HT-R340) Hooking up the polks I found myself hearing new things in old songs :)

Oh mine are monitor 40 not the 30s...

http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Audio-Mon.../dp/B0009YWCT4

going to make completely overboard rears someday.. (or maybe I will wire them both up for a center channel hmmm)

I'm not going to use the HDMI for my sound though. I'm going to use the Optical output on my R3E into the Yamaha. I've got in-wall optical jacks just for it. Thats what i use in my HTPC in the living room and it (7.1) sounds sweet...

Pics soon. Right now i looks the same as last pics just with all the wiring and boxes. Insulation, subflooring and sheerock this weekend. Then i start building the desks/countertops.

Got this to hang my gaming monitor from the ceiling. Benching monitor is a scissor wall mount.
http://www.atdec.com/mounts/ceiling-...ok-th-1040-ctl

Yeah, I do not use HDMI for audio either, I also am running TOSLINK :)

That was part of the "high end" features I was referring to when looking at receivers. Need to have the right combination of hardware to support bitstream passthrough.

The R3E is one of those boards that has a decent enough audio chip to cover any needs you have I think.

Looking forward to the pics of your setup...

Curious.. I tried having a 24/7 system, but just flip Hardware way to much to really build a system to just sit (okay not quite true.. my HTPC goes 3 months at a shot without me opening it up :) ) How are you intending to set yours up?

You doing a custom desk too or putting hw on a shelf? (used to like integrating PCs, now I like shelf builds :) )

I'm not going to integrate. Things change so a permanent integration isn't feasable imo.

Any idea on how these are? I don.t mind having the rears in the ceiling thats actually a good thing in my situation.

http://cgi.ebay.com/B-W-VM1-AS1-Surr...item3cba6bfeb0

Sounds like it will be epic Duke ....... :thumbsup:

Going x58 for the gamer .... Not fimiliar with the chip, but the Xonar is a nice cheap card

Grabbed this for the bencher. Swapping monitors for benching was getting to be a pain. My Samsung can't do the higher resolutions so this will be better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824236123

Nice find, I have an asus 24" in my office .... flawless ............ :thumbsup:

They'd be all kinds of kick ass if they're B&W's, but I'm a bit concerned regarding the picture of the car sub up in the top left hand corner lol.

Little research shows they were around $3000 new.

He says that those (what you call car subs) are B&W ccm 65 in-ceiling speakers. http://www.productwiki.com/b-w-ccm-65/ IDK whether or not to believe him. What do you think?

They look legit now that I know what they are lol, but he should have mentioned them and their stats in that add...those speakers are not originally part of the VM1 package.

Totally your call, I've never bought a thing off the bay in my life lol.