@benanders Thank you sir, really appreciate your thoughtful comments. To be clear, when considering the DIY route, I never had/have intention to do any of the design or build myself. Rather, what I was asking in the DIY thread was if a public domain design existed that I could then hire a carpenter to build. All with the intent to save some money (not that I am trying to be cheap, but money is money and I would like to retire some day

). As I stated before and seems it was missed, I do not have the time or capability to take on such an endeavor. While the other DIY thread has been excellent and some great advice given, I have not seen any DIY designs suggested that would necessarily equal those on my short list. Maybe equal, but by no means exceed. And for all the trouble I would experience I am sure, by going down such a path, seems indeed the ROI is just not there. Maybe I will reconsider DIY again in the future, but for now I stay the course on my quest with the retail side.
Gotcha,
@MKR . Indeed, I didn’t focus on that. I think those intents are outside the traditional bounds of DIY (more bespoke / custom). Most of the guys on diyAudio do an impressive amount of research, trial-error, tooling, software manipulation, etc., and none of the successful ones land on anything “end game” by predetermination. That’s largely an incompatible mindset with the spirit of DIY.
And many (most?) of them do it for a sense of fun/satisfaction, or because they simply have more time x desire, than money. Pay someone(s) else for that sort of work, and cost goes up fast. See the posts on ASR comparing two mid-sized KEF models made in China vs. UK. Big difference in cost between models seems more reflected in origin (salary/hourly wages?) than in disparity of measurements. Never mind that for your list, though, as the Blades aren’t made in China.

Disparity of quality craftsmanship between high end speakers made in China vs. elsewhere is increasingly a thing of the past.
Keep in mind, you can always circle back to an earlier suggestion: discrete speaker sets for discrete duties (music / movies).
There is a lot of info on ASR, some of it from professional sound mixers / masterers, about how consumer home theater audio (discs, streaming files) is “downsized” [my term, perhaps not what they’d use] from theatric tracks, and apparently much of HT audio doesn’t aim for dramatic private setups (just like 2-Ch music doesn’t often target top-tier audiophile kit).
My point being, if you find whatever presentation you value most in a pair of stereo speakers for music, consider going with that and finalizing home theater L/R’s later IF the original speaker pair doesn’t behave as you wish for movies. A pair (or even quintet! ) of those DIY Murphy corner line arrays look like something a reasonable contractor could be hired to do if you want BIG sound from some movies, but not from unplugged/acoustic concert music,
and don’t want to break the bank.
Don’t underestimate the potential gains from avoiding Jacks-of-all-trades.
I’ll push my current setup as an example: What I want of my 2-Ch music speakers is different than what I want from movie speakers. I use one setup for stereo music, and another for movies/tv. My tv is on the room’s long wall, but the music experience is needed from a perpendicular short wall due to room layout and use. That discrepancy could not be avoided.
So for tunes, 105” arrays make the room sound like a small music hall, I mean they really do, and a pair of 3” satellites (yes, 3” woofers, no typo) do L/R/phantom C for movies just fine, action-packed flicks included. How? My two 10” 300-600W powered subs move from 2’ behind the arrays on the short wall (
music: 0° phase, 16” above floor) to each end of the couch on the long wall (
movies:180° phase, on-floor), keeping with my goal of [
relatively] unobtrusive, modular stereo kit and providing very different, but very effective service in both music and movies. Shifting between the two systems takes about 2.5-3 minutes to achieve if I’m dragging my feet.
If I hadn’t moved into [
relatively] small living spaces over the past ~decade, my background probably would’ve prevented me from thinking about modular/adaptive techniques. With your fairly non-restrictive space, I see even
less need for multitasking in
your choice(s) of speakers, and that’s good!
In my case, the systems’ magic feather is also the Achilles’ heel: an untreated, fully concrete room (floor-walls-ceiling) does things to home audio that no drywall dwelling I’ve been in does, both good and bad, for both music and movies.
In
any your case, there’s no need for unobtrusive / modular kit, nor for different systems to face different MLP’s, for limiting the # of subs, and obviously no requirement for an untreated room. Still, I see nothing begging only one set of main speakers (music vs. movies) in your case, either. That’s what got me interested enough to finally post on ASR - how different your scenario is from mine, including a willingness to go all-in, investment-wise, from the get-go. Hopefully that hasn’t resulted in me over-sharing. (insert sweating-laughing emoji here…)
If
I were between your ears, I’d listen to figure out which 2-Ch speakers do my favorite parlor tricks best (and move them all around at the dealers’ - forward, outward, haul them halfway into the room, angle them in/out, tell the dealer to get some old California-king-sized bed mattresses pinned against the walls in different configs [joking!]). Then, if you get those speakers home and they don’t sound perfect for movies, well, you’ve still got end game music speakers, plus the firsthand knowledge that end game doesn’t always translate to Jack-of-all-trades, right?
All that typed, I’m guessing speakers that play your music just right will also be fine for L/R movie duty in a well-treated room. “End game” movie speakers might even be harder to define, since we can all compare the end effects to multiple versions of real cinema kit experienced over the years. No one I know has found a big public cinema kitted out for stereo music listening sessions, so most of us enter that search with a rather ignorant mind’s
eye ear, compared to movies. I hold that ignorance can be bliss!
Yours is more of a
FUNundrum than a conundrum: $30k might not land you Wisdom or Scaena arrays, but it’ll buy a LOT of great speakers. Happy auditioning,
@MKR !
