sk8tingsmurf, you and I are 2 peas in a pod. I like this forum so much partly because it is blazing fast...and also because I'm not a newbie (heh heh) here. We just push the envelope a little here and there as we can get by with...even if it means hijacking a perfectly good thread! BTW, my house doesn't have a basement either, it's cramped, the shed is full and it's too cold outside now to use it anyway...and I'm pitching and moving things to make room to do this thing. At least at this stage I have the full cooperation of my wife, who finally jumped on the bandwagon with this whole speaker-building idea once we got the hi-def tv and she experienced the dynamics of good home theate (and raves from her friends!). So I'm feeling good about it and am doing this as I have the time.
kfr01, I will be very interested to read your reviews and will save that for a little later when I can spend some time enjoying them. Right now I've homework to do and an appointment with my wife to watch The Office later ;). As far as some of your questions: the position of the midbass won't be as low as this sketch. The thing is with doing something freehand in Paint is that once you get it done you don't want to do it all over again. But in real life it will be up toward the top of it's enclosure, which will be near the bottom of the side slope. This woofer is placed fairly low in my current speakers and I'm not getting any problems because of the distance.
I think that when they're built the look will excite, and the angles will make it look like a complicated build. But laying it out piece-by-piece I can see that it will be straightforward simple.
Speaker selection: this is where I have been breaking the rules and haven't stopped yet. Because of the fact that I am always on a very limited budget for my hobbies, I started out by looking for closeout buys on speakers. I chose this mid for the center channel because of its buyout price ($6) and because it was made by Vifa. The MTM center works perfectly, IMHO, so I'm glad I had the forsight to buy 4 more at the same time, knowing I was going to do a mains rebuild in the future. The future is now, so now they will be put to use. Since they are discontinued, there is no link but they were originally made for Infinity as OEM mids. They have a good sound in the center so I'm confident in using them in the mains.
I chose the Vifa tweeter because of it's very nice response and its looks, which resembles the Tang Band tweeter (now it's discontinued) that I used in the center. The specs are almost identical, so I'm expecting good results. It looks real good crossed at 3500 Hz with the mids.
This is the midbass I currently have and the only item that I'm using from my mains. This woofer will cross with the mids at 500 Hz and the low end will be taken care of by the Onkyo (got that from you) HT amp. I'll use 80 Hz as the crossover point to the sub, which I'm doing now with my current setup.
Programs used as I've mentioned before: SPL Trace to copy the manufacturer's response graphs; Unibox to work the enclosures and also to import the finished crossover response; Speaker Workshop for crossover design. The ability to share files between the programs makes it work. And, of course, my vivid imagination to fill in all the missing parts.
The TV is a Samsung. 50" is the right size for the room, and it is an impressive piece. Finest picture quality I've ever seen in a television.
Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.