Well, I've gone with the in-wall speakers, much to my wifes pleasure. I've got B&W Signature 7NT's for the front left & right, a CWM Cinema for the center, CWM 800 for side surrounds and CWM 650 for the rears. My new Outlaw 950 pre, and 770 amp arrived a couple days ago.

The first night, like a kid at Christmas, I took the speakers out of their box and wired them up directly. Big mistake. Nothing worse than spending gobs-o-money and having it sound like %&#$. I took a deep breath and finally went to sleep. The next morning I installed the side and rear surrounds. I have the rear ones in a vertical section of our vaulted ceiling so they back up into the attic (not a closed wall cavity). I built some speaker boxes (1'650 cu/in) out of scrap 3/4" OSB. The side surrounds were easier since they went into standard wall cavities. The only "gotcha" is that one wall is an interior (hollow) and the other is exterior (filled with fiberglass). I stuffed some insulation in the hollow wall above and below the speaker and they both sound reasonable balanced. I'll have to come back to that later and do some fine tweeking.

I'm having an entertainment center built (I can build anything out of metal but can't do much with wood) to hold the front L & R and center channels. Each speaker enclosure has a volume of about 9'500 cu/in (which I may have to reduce). I'm still waiting for the cabinetry, so I can't get too serious about sound yet. The center channel speaker is magnetically sheiled so I'm not to nervous there, but the left & right are not sheilded. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I have them far enough away from the TV (rainbows are pretty but not on my monitor).

I'll keep everyone posted. Right now I'm figuring out the 950 and it's remote. My initial gut feeling is that I'm happy I went with the bigger amp. The speakers seem to love (and require) lots of power.