Exodus Questions

[Fryguy]

Well, I've been looking around and shopping for speakers for a while now, mostly because I haven't had a suitable location for them. Now that I'm moving however I finally get a living room to myself to build a theater.

Here is the general idea that I'm planning:

Exodus 2641 mains
Exodus LCR center
Exodus 61 rear surrounds
Avalanche 18" sealed subwoofer

Amplification TBA, but most likely some cheaper amplifiers, probably something like Behringer a500s.

I've looked at a lot of other designs, notably Modula MTM and some of the Dayton RS designs floating around. My main issue with these is that, with the exception of the Modula, they are for the most part unfinished "tweaker" designs. People are building these and playing around with the crossovers, etc. While this is fine in general, my purpose of DIYing is not to be a tweaker; it's to get tremendous speakers for cheap. I have experience with adire products, and am almost certainly going to be happy with the level of speaker that the exodus is. Without the ability to audition the speakers I won't really know what I'm missing anyway, so I'm going to just pick one that I'm more comfortable with and deal with it.

In short, my goal is to spend money now on speakers, and after they are built, not to touch/tweak with them, at all, and hopefully own them for at least a few years. I'm not one who's looking to constantly change designs or find something different/better/new.

Now, that said, I have a few issues I'd like to ask about:

1. Should I go with 2641s for my mains over LCRs? These are going to get a lot of musical use, probably moreso than theater use. I'm looking to focus on musical performance. Keeping in mind that I have a subwoofer to cover the bottom 1.5-2 octaves, is there a need for the 2641s? Which is the more "musical" speaker. My listening preference is speakers that are more aggressive and forward. For example, I prefer focal/mb quart to dynaudio, I prefer grado to sennheiser, and I hate the sound of electrostatics (way too neural and lifeless to me).

2. Are there any recommended upgrades on either the 2641 or LCR crossover? I know there has to be a stopping point at which one makes compromises and one sets the price point there. If I was willing to spend say, $100 extra on the pair would I be able to obtain a significant improvement by upgrading certain crossover components, and if so, which ones?

3. IIRC, there's an issue with the LCR being out of phase with the 2641, and ifI use an LCR as my center it should be wired 180 degrees out of phase. Is this still true, and can anyone elaborate any more on properly voice matching 2641s to LCRs?

4. Any benefit to bi-amping these? Possibly the extremii on one channel and the css/usher on another?

5. Anything else I should know before making the decision to go with these?