Post by cheyneb25 on Jul 9, 2019 1:11:50 GMT
Hey everyone, i posted this Q a while back in an AVS thread but no one ever responded or gave any advice on it so I thought I'd try my luck here. I'm just looking to get some input on it so feel free to fire away with your thoughts.
I'll keep it as short and sweet as possible - I'm about to build some custom cabinetry for the front of my non-dedicated home theater and will be placing the new cabinetry on the front wall. It will be located about 1-2 feet behind the front 3 speakers of my Atmos setup and it's the only placement option for the cabinetry in the room I'm using. In the research I've conducted on the subject so far, i read an ASC article by Art Noxon where he mentions that having an entertainment center / cabinetry / etc. located in the middle of the front sound stage area is generally a bad idea as it can distort the imaging of the sound due to unwanted reflections bouncing off of the hard surfaces and equip. located there.
The various threads and forums i have read over the last couple months all seem to differ on the level of importance assigned to this issue and I was just hoping to get some clarification.
My idea to help mediate any reflection issues was to construct some custom cabinetry that is built as acoustically transparent as possible. What I mean by this, is building a very minimal, but functional, cabinetry framework upon which I would mount some acoustically porous partitions (square-hole plastic mesh and speaker grill cloth set into frames - basically like large square speaker grill covers) to separate each of the interior bays of the cabinetry. For the shelving inside, i was going to build a similar design - essentially just a frame with some grating/mesh attached to it to serve as the shelf surface (think chicken wire size metal mesh but stronger and with a smaller hole size).
My line of thinking is that if there are no flat solid walls in the cabinetry (only the faux walls/partitions referenced above) and I can keep the amount of equip. in the new cabinetry to a minimum and as low to the floor as possible, then that should help to keep the front soundstage from getting muddled up with a lot of reflections.
It's worth mentioning that there is already some existing cabinetry that the prev. homeowners had done and it worked fine up until i got to be more serious about the acoustics in my room - I needed to replace it with something more acoustically friendly and this gives me an opportunity to design it as needed. The room has changed some since these pics were taken but you can still see the existing cabinetry in them, and i also included some very basic hand sketches of the new design that i was considering. Hopefully this will give the peeps here a better idea of the details. One thing not really detailed at all on my sketches is that the 2 tall rectangles seen are slide out shelves to hold my movie collection - they would be located at the rear of the cabinetry, right on the front wall where it's going in.
Anyhoo... I've been trying to figure out if an attempt to build such an unusual cabinetry design would be worthwhile, so any and all suggestions are appreciated here.
I'll keep it as short and sweet as possible - I'm about to build some custom cabinetry for the front of my non-dedicated home theater and will be placing the new cabinetry on the front wall. It will be located about 1-2 feet behind the front 3 speakers of my Atmos setup and it's the only placement option for the cabinetry in the room I'm using. In the research I've conducted on the subject so far, i read an ASC article by Art Noxon where he mentions that having an entertainment center / cabinetry / etc. located in the middle of the front sound stage area is generally a bad idea as it can distort the imaging of the sound due to unwanted reflections bouncing off of the hard surfaces and equip. located there.
The various threads and forums i have read over the last couple months all seem to differ on the level of importance assigned to this issue and I was just hoping to get some clarification.
My idea to help mediate any reflection issues was to construct some custom cabinetry that is built as acoustically transparent as possible. What I mean by this, is building a very minimal, but functional, cabinetry framework upon which I would mount some acoustically porous partitions (square-hole plastic mesh and speaker grill cloth set into frames - basically like large square speaker grill covers) to separate each of the interior bays of the cabinetry. For the shelving inside, i was going to build a similar design - essentially just a frame with some grating/mesh attached to it to serve as the shelf surface (think chicken wire size metal mesh but stronger and with a smaller hole size).
My line of thinking is that if there are no flat solid walls in the cabinetry (only the faux walls/partitions referenced above) and I can keep the amount of equip. in the new cabinetry to a minimum and as low to the floor as possible, then that should help to keep the front soundstage from getting muddled up with a lot of reflections.
It's worth mentioning that there is already some existing cabinetry that the prev. homeowners had done and it worked fine up until i got to be more serious about the acoustics in my room - I needed to replace it with something more acoustically friendly and this gives me an opportunity to design it as needed. The room has changed some since these pics were taken but you can still see the existing cabinetry in them, and i also included some very basic hand sketches of the new design that i was considering. Hopefully this will give the peeps here a better idea of the details. One thing not really detailed at all on my sketches is that the 2 tall rectangles seen are slide out shelves to hold my movie collection - they would be located at the rear of the cabinetry, right on the front wall where it's going in.
Anyhoo... I've been trying to figure out if an attempt to build such an unusual cabinetry design would be worthwhile, so any and all suggestions are appreciated here.
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