First floor plan single-family house 190m2

Is the cabin actually being built around the speaker positions here? :D Oh man. Good sound is good, no question, but good systems can handle many positions. I would just focus on a nice, effective layout…

Good sound is good, no question, but good systems can handle many positions.

Good systems can at best mitigate a total disaster, but they definitely cannot work miracles.

I would simply take care of a nice, effective layout

Both are certainly possible, but that requires clear priorities from the start. Trying to solve such fundamental problems in the last five percent will most likely result in no requirement being satisfactorily met.

Not planning the acoustics of a 40-60m2 open space already has something of a gymnasium/train station acoustic. Sparse furnishing and hard floors and walls also don't help. A system x.1 on 4x4m does not cover the open space. Anyone interested can come listen with their own CD/Blu-ray on the next Berlin trip, coffee is also available

Is the room actually being built around the speaker positions here? :D

Oh man. Good sound is good, no question, but good systems manage with many positions.

I would just focus on a nice, effective floor plan…

I don’t exactly know how the speaker position topic got so out of hand here :D Actually, my statement was only that the topic "home cinema" is relatively important to us and accordingly we would like to place speakers behind the sofa. To wrap this up: A nice, effective floor plan is of course much more important, and if possible, it would be nice to get speakers behind the sofa. They can also be mounted on the ceiling.

Have you ever thought about the option of living with TV/home cinema as one room and cooking/eating as another room?

This also has the advantage that if you have separate visitors, you have two living areas.

We have thought about that too, but we prefer a large living/dining room in order to possibly accommodate a big dining table for parties. Also, we want to have as much window area as possible facing west (left side of the plan) to "extend" the room towards the terrace. A wall between TV and dining would be rather counterproductive, wouldn’t it?

A thoughtful feedback from you. That’s rare :)

When you get so many helpful tips here, you want to give something back :)

I remind you that you are planning for 2! kids. Families sit together in front of the TV ;)

Yes, that’s of course true. Ultimately we are currently discussing whether to place the TV 1 meter to the left or right. Both would be possible since no window was/is planned on that wall.

If you like it, then work on it. I don’t see speakers in the middle of the room being good for living. Can’t you mount them on the ceiling, build them into the ceiling or something?

Yes, that’s how we would also do it. Floorstanding speakers always get in the way. But speakers installed in the ceiling shouldn’t hang directly above people, but somewhat shifted backwards.

Well, seeing one’s house while living in it.

It’s often about sightlines that arise from a place where you spend a lot of time in a direction, and then a view to the distance in the garden appears. That opens up rooms, no one wants to look at a wall. (Not even on the toilet!)

Preferably from the entrance door to the end of the garden, with a nice door with decoration in the hall in between… or the cooking area with dining area, then terrace door, nicely decorated terrace and then in the background a beautiful flowerbed…

You build an image you will see and that is visually pleasing. That’s how architecture works :)

Okay, I understand what you mean and have tried to redesign the kitchen accordingly. The floor plan comes at the very end of my post. Now you can stand in front of the stove and at the same time look left towards the dining room (glass sliding door) and further on into the garden. What do you think?

There are so many… I think you lack the view to see rooms flexibly. For you, everything must be assigned a function where you can close the door. But a home office can also be integrated with other functions, and the trend has been for 20 years to use rooms flexibly.

A kitchen is not only for cooking but integrates into the living aspect; one of two offices can be openly accommodated in a living corridor for everyone, etc.

… especially think about it when you notice you have too many rooms, which is actually unnecessary or a plan overstretched by having a very long corridor without additional use. Then I would consider whether a somewhat more open corridor with multiple uses would bring more added value.

I can also understand that point. However, we don’t particularly like this open construction method, which is why we have consciously opted for a closed kitchen. Therefore, I don’t see how the corridor on the ground floor could be avoided or how multiple use could generate added value. Also, two closed offices are important to us since both of us will continue to spend >=50% of working time in the home office.

If you lie there, the desired cinema sound will remain wishful thinking anyway. You are then shadowed from two or three sides (if you lie side by side). For surround sound, you really have to sit upright. Or are your ears located somewhere else than everyone else’s? ;)

It is clear that you have to sit upright. So "lying down" was maybe the wrong word, but I meant that we put our feet up.

If it were my house, I would probably favor the solution from kbt09, but move the windows. Huge lift-and-slide door and another north window. Opens the room most beautifully. Why the speakers can’t be hung on the wall behind the sofa (almost on its corners) escapes my knowledge now. We have it like that and the sound is great.
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We also like that variant very much, but it has the disadvantage that you cannot look into the main part of the garden (towards the northwest). In front of the north window would be a fence.

Below now an updated floor plan again. What do you think of it?

We have already thought about that too, but we prefer a large living/dining room in order to possibly accommodate a large dining table for celebrations. We also want as many windows as possible facing west (left side of the plan) to "extend" the room towards the terrace. A wall between the TV and the dining area would be rather counterproductive, wouldn’t it?

One would rather realize this by placing the living=TV area in the current kitchen space and having the dining/cooking area fully by the terrace. The kitchen approach in your last plan is definitely not bad. You basically have clearly defined aisles... work aisle and pass-through aisle/"the aisle where I get something from the fridge" ;).