Surround Speakers & Subwoofer

[jeremybe]

I'm rebuilding my family room (also my media room) and my wife has told me that my Polk surround sound speakers and my Velodyne sub are not allowed to be used in the setup - The Polks are Black which would not go with the color of the walls and the sub is too large for the room (According to her..) - Since I'm having a new ceiling put in, as well as new hardwood floors, can anyone give me some recommendations on either very small cube like surroudns or in wall/ceiling surround speakers? Can these built-ins really compare to a good pari of Bipole/Dipole surrounds?

As far as Subwoofers go, I was looking at either an infloor Polk or the Sunfire eq subs - Since they're small, she'll allow them.

One last question - I asked this on another forumn, but the more advice the better - I'm having my front speakers free stand outside of a custom cabinet I'm having built - Should I use a floor plate for the speaker connections or just run wires - The Majority of my AV equipment will be in a Rack in the basement - Shoudl I run cables directly or use a patch panel - How would a patch even work with Toslink/spdif???

Thanks!!

[KeithM]

check out orb audio . I've heard good things about them for being so tiny. Also, have you looked at Infinite Baffle subs?

[Snap]

I prefure to use a bull-nose wall plate vs speaker terminal wall plates. I would just pull the wire from the AV rack to the wall were the speaker is going to go, put a single gang bull nose wall plate, and leave enough speaker wire comming out to hook to your speakers. It also saves time and money on the install. I will see if I can find a pix of what I am talking about.