I too was impressed with the value of the Five Star. One thing that convinced me not to buy it was that it required the layout of four burners and a reversible griddle/grill in the center. I would rather have six burners. I am also not sure if the griddle/ grill has enough btu's to get the job done. Lastly, I have heard concerns that reversible griddle/ grills can be a bear to keep clean (although I think an additional reversible plate can be purchased for $275 and then one can be used for a grill, one for a griddle. One really nice thing about the Five Star 48" range is that one oven is gas and the other is electric.

I am unaware of any effect that would cause a baffle to make more noise at low speed than a [clean] mesh filter. One expects air turbulence for the same flow rate to be greater with a mesh filter. Further, baffles make very little noise at low speed. I can only hear, under quiet conditions, a bit of motor rumble from my roof mounted fan. (Scaling my Wolf Pro Island hood to 30 inches width would scale my fan to a nominal 750 cfm at full speed, or maybe a real flow rate with pressure losses of 450 cfm. There is only modest baffle noise even at full speed.) It might be safe to observe that mesh filters load up with lint and grease, so once fairly well blocked, the air flow would decrease and whatever turbulence noise there was would attenuate with the reduced flow. Under normal use baffles are immune to blockage of this type. The important factors are a hood large enough in aperture area to encompass and capture the rising expanding effluent, large enough in aperture volume to support the air flow rate in containing and expelling the effluent, and sufficient air flow rate. If the OP chooses a mesh filter hood, I recommend close attention to filter cleaning, possibly on a weekly basis depending on observed filter impairment rate. kas

My home is under construction so I am not yet using my appliance choices. I am going with Blue Star. I have never used Capital so I can not comment on that. I have had the Wolf cook top and wall ovens, viking range and thermador range in past homes. Of those I would say that Wolf AND Viking were equal. However, Wolf is having issues with the interior ovens cracking, I am sure you have read all that. Viking is just making a comeback so who knows. I did have to open the Wolf oven to turn my food for even cooking. The Wolf cook top is not that powerful. I think with Wolf in particular you are paying for the name. It lacks power. It is pretty, and you will get the best service. So if that is the most important thing for you then Wolf is your best bet. Thermador was a very big disappointment for me. The oven cooked unevenly and the griddle took a life time to get hot and never actually did get hot enough to enjoy cooking on it. The Viking was a work horse and eventually had issue with the screws on t the door. Not a big deal. I know they had issues with this but it really was not a big deal. After I had mine the company sort of went down hill and got a bad name. I am going with Blue Star Platinum range top and the new electric wall ovens. I want the the open burner. (personal preference) For me, I also want the 25K BTU burner for wok cooking. It does offer a true simmer. I will be able to throw the griddle on where I want and getting hot enough is not going to be an issue with the high power burners. I am not a trained chef but I love to cook and do A LOT of it. I have not heard any feed back on users of the new BS electric wall ovens but I like that it has a pizza stone in the bottom. I am hopeful that this feature will prove to be wonderfully useful with pizza and rustic breads. It fits a full sheet pan and has 5,000 watt Infrared broiler. My top priority was a wall oven with French Doors. I think I found an oven that had even more than I was hoping for. All in all, just consider what is your number one most important thing to have and go from there. Then just consider how you cook and what you really need or want. You will find comments positive and negative on everything. Wolf will give the best service, or so everyone says. If that is the most important thing for you then just prioritize the other things on your list and see what you are left with. Coming to my decisions were gut wrenching for me. I changed my mind what seemed like a 100 times. I finally figured out what was important to ME besides the french doors. Once you really consider how you work in the kitchen one should start to rise to the top. Trust your instincts.

We decided on the 36" Thermador Dual Fuel Pro Harmony with griddle. It'll be a few months before we're able to install but I'm looking forward to it! It's sitting in my garage right now just being a tease. The main impacts on our decision were the depth (standard vs commercial) because it's in a tight corner which would be uncomfortable with a more protruding appliance. And the fact that it came with a free dishwasher rebate. Even though we didn't actually need to replace the dishwasher, I couldn't resist a shiny freshie one vs the one that came with the house. I thought really hard about going with the Wolf especially with their good customer service history, but I was worried about the porcelain chipping, backorder status, and the fact that some of the features that were a plus on the Thermador like the telescoping oven grates, were available for an extra fee on an already more expensive unit. The Thermador was already a stretch for us so that's where we stayed! I decided I wanted a dual fuel rather than an all-gas, so we eliminated the BlueStar, though it seems like a solid choice otherwise. Best of luck to you all with your decisions - now it's just puzzling out the hood and ventilation systems for me. If you thought the range decision was hard - eep!