Need to place speakers in a cabinet.. need advice (1 Viewer)

Hi all.. as a pat of a home renovation. We are having a wall of custom made built in cabinets installed along the wall which will house the TV, speakers (2 floor standing towers and a center channel) and AV equipment..along with other stuff.

I know that placing speakers in a cabinet is not ideal, but I would like to get an idea of

1) how much will sound quality be impacted and

2) is there anything I can do to the design of the cabinet to minimize the impact on sound quality.

We do not have a large home so we need all this built in cabinet space for storage. Here is a rough drawing of what we are thinking. There will be open space around the tower speakers and the speakers will be resting on the floor.. not on the cabinet. I have Monitor Audio Silver RS for my speakers.

What are everyone's thoughts.


builtin.JPG12605k .JPG file

You can get some notion of what happens to speakers in a cabinet this way: get a big jar, something like a mayo jar and hold it at arm's length. While talking, bring the jar up to your mouth. When the jar gets close, that is what happens to speakers in a cabinet.


Even open doors to cabinet spaces near the speakers can cause this type of sound.


You can prevent the worst of it by either making the cabinet space very large, or only just barely big enough for the speaker, and by keeping other cabinet doors nearby shut. You may end up with speakers that sound like in-walls, but that isn't quite as bad as the "tanky" sound you get with the mayo jar.


good luck! oh, btw, I couldn't open the picture. not sure why.