OTHER TECH

STOWAWAYS This recounting makes Drew's system building sound way more linear than it was. Fanatical about doing his homework - and about leaving options open until the last possible moment - he didn't decide on many important aspects of the installation until Zero Hour. For instance, since he wasn't sure where he wanted to have the components, he didn't know how much wire he would need or where it would be run.

While the closets presented the most attractive option, since everything but the TV would be out of sight, putting the gear there would have added to the expense of the installation and slowed it down. He bought a vertical component rack but ruled it out because it would have meant long cable runs to the TV and snaking wires to both the front speakers and the surrounds - and it would have been another piece of furniture in the room. By using the Salamander Designs Synergy Triple 20 TV stand, the gear is all in one place, so the only long cable runs are to the surrounds.

By the time he'd decided where he was going to put everything, the room had been painted and carpeted - which made running the wires especially challenging for Drew's friend, electrician Glenn Quaedvlieg. Interconnects wouldn't be a problem since all the gear is on the same rack, but the wires to the surround speakers would need to be run an average of 35 feet to the other end of the room. Since there's no crawl space, threading wires under the large entranceway to the office space would have been difficult, even if the carpet could be easily pulled up there. Glenn could have run the wire behind the baseboard molding on the other side of the room, but successfully routing it under the frame for the deck door presented a big challenge.

Drew decided to run the cables up inside the wall behind the TV, through the ceiling, and then down inside the walls to the surround speakers. This meant making small holes every few feet for snaking the wire, and then sealing and painting them - which ran the risk that the patch jobs would be obvious later on. But Glenn did such an expert job of both running the wire and patching up that he left no trace of his handiwork. "We staggered the holes," Drew says, "offsetting them from the center line so they wouldn't be obvious. You really have to look to find them."