Thanks Purbeast! This was one of those projects I've been wanting to do for a long time but was reluctant to bring up because (1) it involved a lot of work in a highly used part of the house, and (2) my wife couldn't care less about home theater, listening to music with good equipment, and such. So I was astonished when she came to me and asked about replacing the short stub wall that separated the great room from the faux foyer with something more substantial. Her sole issue was that specific aspect of the room's design (i.e. creating separate spaces). She raised no concern at all when I suggested that "more substantial" would mean something that could support a 65" LCD TV. You can't really tell from the pictures but the configuration of this room before the project really precluded any sort of decent home theater configurations - the TV had to be too small, one front speaker had to be 8 feet further from the TV than the other, and the seating arrangements sucked. So two completely different concerns happened to overlap and create harmony.
I was even more amazed when she didn't object to the dual folder horn subwoofers. Her only request was that I paint them the same color as the rest of the walls in the room in order to make them stand out a bit less. I would have painted them like Holstein cows as long I got permission to build them, but I actually like the minimalist appearance with their current color.
The Salamander media console was the finishing touch. It's the most contemporary piece of furniture in the house but it works really well.
Best of all, when I'm alone in the house, this system can really rock. Fortunately, we live on a 6 acre lot and my only sound limit is presented by the equipment itself.
Next up is building a much larger folder horn sub for another application. It's actually really easy (this is coming from someone with no woodworking experience and very few real woodworking tools) and they put out astonishing sound.