Speakers in 'Fake' wall (1 Viewer)

[John_D]

I am in the beginning phases of designing my theater in my basement. One of the challenges that I have, due to limited headroom and other obstacles, is a window right behind my screen (this will be a Front Projection theater).

One idea that I have, is to build a fake wall about 20" or so thick, to hide the window and to house my front channels and center, and also mounting the screen. The interior of the 'Fake' wall will be filled with sound insulation.

My question to you experts is this, by putting my front and center channel in this wall, will I be cheating myself of any acoustical treatments that the speaker enclosures inherently have?

The speakers in question are Paradigm Monitor 9's and a Energy EC-100 Center, which will be changed hopefully sooner then later to a Paradigm center.

Any advice you can give would be most appreciated.


Thanks.

 

[John Garcia]

You won't be robbing yourself of any of the cabinet benefits by mounting the mains in the wall, but this type of placement is typically not ideal. Most speakers benefit from being away from the walls, both rear and side, by at least 1-2 feet and usually having some toe in. The front baffles should not be flush with anything, including your screen, they should be a few inches, to approximately 1 foot in front of large flat surfaces, and a false wall will not allow for much of these conditions.

One thing you can do would be to get a heavy curtain to go along the back wall to block the window. It will serve all of your purposes - sound damping, light blockage, and sort of hide the screen mounting, maybe with a little more curtain below it with a spot for the CC370 center.

 

[John_D]

Thanks for the suggestion. In my wall, I had planned a degree of toe in to direct the sound towards the center of the room.

Why is the wall not an ideal way to do things? I have seen so many custom theaters do this.

 

[John Garcia]

Just because a lot of people do it, doesn't mean it is right. There are plenty of people who buy Bose.... It LOOKS good, and can sound good, but if sound is a greater priority, this type of placement is not going to be optimum, IMO. Speakers like these need some room to breathe and should not be placed inset or flush with a wall in this fashion. In and on-wall speakers are designed for this purpose, and many of these custom installations use this type of speaker. Since you already have the speakers, I'd first try some setups to find what works best to get the speakers sounding right, but that is coming from someone who gives a greater priority to audio.

 

[Levesque]

It's the eternal combat between sound quality and aesthetics consideration. I did torture myself over this problem also.

I'm having my dedicated HT build right now, and decided to put my Paradigm Signature S8 in front of the stage, where they will sound the best.

Corner placement, or near the wall is the worst place for mains.

And never forgot that after a small 5 or 10 minutes of "wow" "my gosh" for your long hours of aesthetics planning, you will close the light and be in complete darkness for around 2 hours.

But internet surfers will tell you that your HT is "cool", but that you should have put those "ugly" mains in the corners behind GOM and fabric.

There is really only 3 choices on this subject.

1) You are only concerned by PQ and AQ. You don't care about aesthetics and build everything to have awesome PQ and AQ.

2) You are after the "wow" "my god" factor from internet surfers and friends. You then invest hours and hours on trimming, painting, designing, and talking with your wife for hours...

3) You have alot of money. You pay someone to equalize, plan, and invest money in room treatments... then your mains in the corner will sound awesome.

I did start a thread in AVS about that subject.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=386922

Go read it. It could help you make a decision...

 

[John_D]

Thanks for the direct answer, that is what I was looking for. I do prefer audio over cosmetic, and I will try some setups without the fake wall. I think I may have found another work-around anyways.

Thanks again.

John