Integrating floorstanding speakers in a media wall - how?

[mr47]

I've done some research, and know that the knee-jerk response to such a question is "DON'T". However, I have certain limitations which can't be avoided, and I'm simply looking for the approach that will maximize sound quality in this situation.

1. Having a media wall is a hard requirement from my wife - she won't budge from this. And frankly, given the planned TV size and its placement in the room, just having a smaller TV stand and placing the speakers on the side would hardly resolve the issue (the speakers would still be squeezed (relatively speaking) between a wall and the TV cabinet on one side, and a kitchen cabinet and the TV cabinet on the other side.
2. The speakers cannot be moved forward into the room. Another hard requirement. They need to be either flush with the wall, or at most a little bit peeping out into the room from their nooks (I suppose that recessing them won't do any good, but that's an option, obviously.
3. The speakers in question are DALI OBERON 5s. In fact, I have a complete 5.1 set from DALI (minus the sub, which is still en route), with an OBERON Vokal for center and OBERON 1s for surrounds. Part of the reason I don't want to forego the floorstanders is because they integrate great with the other speakers in the setup.
4. The media wall would be about 60cm deep, so in theory there would be ample room between the speaker and the rear of the wall (about 30cm), if it helps.
5. The nooks for the speakers can be up to 45cm wide (giving the speakers about clearance 15cm on each side), but just a couple of centimeters taller than the speakers themselves). I can also make the nooks fit the speakers snugly, if that's better - the media wall is still in the design phase.
6. This is all driven by a DENON AVR-X3800H, so XT32 is available to the rescue.
7. The option of using other speakers instead of the floorstanders is not off the table, but I'd very much like to avoid it, both budget-wise and because of point 3 above.

So here are my questions (I hope I'm not missing anything):

1. To my understanding, the main issue with putting the speakers flush with the wall and having the nooks fit them snugly is BSC. Wouldn't Audyssey take care of that?
2. Am I better off building snug nooks or opening them up as much as possible? For that matter, will the 45cm-wide opening be enough to avoid any serious issues? If not, how wide would the opening need to be to resolve any issues (I doubt I can go beyond 45cm, but would like to get an idea here)?
3. Again, while I really prefer to avoid replacing the speakers, I'd like to hear opinions on the following options:
   1. Bookshelf speakers - I can easily incorporate shelves in the media wall for them. Though I fail to understand how would that be any different from a nook for the floorstanders (the shelves wouldn't be open on the sides). I'd want to stay within the OBERON family and go with either the 1s or the 3s.
   2. In-wall speakers - I understand that in theory, my situation is the target audience for those. But my worry here is that I'm not a speaker/cabinet designer, and if I simply stick speakers into a wooden wall, how can they sound better than speakers with a carefully designed cabinet? I would go with DALI speakers here, as well, I suppose - to hopefully have a more cohesive sound signature.

If any additional details can help answer the questions, let me know.

Thanks ahead!

 

[TLS Guy]

I've done some research, and know that the knee-jerk response to such a question is "DON'T". However, I have certain limitations which can't be avoided, and I'm simply looking for the approach that will maximize sound quality in this situation.

1. Having a media wall is a hard requirement from my wife - she won't budge from this. And frankly, given the planned TV size and its placement in the room, just having a smaller TV stand and placing the speakers on the side would hardly resolve the issue (the speakers would still be squeezed (relatively speaking) between a wall and the TV cabinet on one side, and a kitchen cabinet and the TV cabinet on the other side.
2. The speakers cannot be moved forward into the room. Another hard requirement. They need to be either flush with the wall, or at most a little bit peeping out into the room from their nooks (I suppose that recessing them won't do any good, but that's an option, obviously.
3. The speakers in question are DALI OBERON 5s. In fact, I have a complete 5.1 set from DALI (minus the sub, which is still en route), with an OBERON Vokal for center and OBERON 1s for surrounds. Part of the reason I don't want to forego the floorstanders is because they integrate great with the other speakers in the setup.
4. The media wall would be about 60cm deep, so in theory there would be ample room between the speaker and the rear of the wall (about 30cm), if it helps.
5. The nooks for the speakers can be up to 45cm wide (giving the speakers about clearance 15cm on each side), but just a couple of centimeters taller than the speakers themselves). I can also make the nooks fit the speakers snugly, if that's better - the media wall is still in the design phase.
6. This is all driven by a DENON AVR-X3800H, so XT32 is available to the rescue.
7. The option of using other speakers instead of the floorstanders is not off the table, but I'd very much like to avoid it, both budget-wise and because of point 3 above.

So here are my questions (I hope I'm not missing anything):

1. To my understanding, the main issue with putting the speakers flush with the wall and having the nooks fit them snugly is BSC. Wouldn't Audyssey take care of that?
2. Am I better off building snug nooks or opening them up as much as possible? For that matter, will the 45cm-wide opening be enough to avoid any serious issues? If not, how wide would the opening need to be to resolve any issues (I doubt I can go beyond 45cm, but would like to get an idea here)?
3. Again, while I really prefer to avoid replacing the speakers, I'd like to hear opinions on the following options:
   1. Bookshelf speakers - I can easily incorporate shelves in the media wall for them. Though I fail to understand how would that be any different from a nook for the floorstanders (the shelves wouldn't be open on the sides). I'd want to stay within the OBERON family and go with either the 1s or the 3s.
   2. In-wall speakers - I understand that in theory, my situation is the target audience for those. But my worry here is that I'm not a speaker/cabinet designer, and if I simply stick speakers into a wooden wall, how can they sound better than speakers with a carefully designed cabinet? I would go with DALI speakers here, as well, I suppose - to hopefully have a more cohesive sound signature.

If any additional details can help answer the questions, let me know.

Thanks ahead!

No Audyssey will not take care of it.

I guess you will be stuck with boomy speech unless you make some modifications

What you should have done is installed a deigned in wall system, or better design it yourself.

My wife gave me the same requirement for our great room, and I installed a really good sounding system.

So, I met my wife's requirements it sounds excellent and she loves it. It is entirely designed to function that way. The sub by the way is an aperiodic transmission line. Total power is 1000 watts, so it fills that very large space.

What you can do, is not mount your speakers flush with the wall. If they protrude a few inches that will ameliorate you problem to a significant extent.

 

[mr47]

Hi, thanks for the reply - I saw your posts on similar threads, so I'm a bit familiar with your design! In fact, the room layout in my case is somewhat similar, though the TV wall is quite a bit shorter than yours (3.5m).

Designing a bespoke system like yours is not in the cards for me. I have neither the budget for it, nor the time to study the subject enough to come up with something reasonable (we need to finalize the media wall design soon and get it into construction, no time to waste).

I have a couple of questions about the 2 distinct possibilities (staying with the floorstanders and protruding them into the space, and going with in-wall speakers), if you don't mind.

• If I stay with the current speakers, and place them protruding a bit from the wall (I realize the more the merrier, but what's the minimum that would help substantially, BTW?), what kind of cabinets would I need? snugly fit around the speakers, or giving as much clearance as possible (about 10-15cm on both sides)? And what about the depth of it - should I go with the maximum available (30cm space behind the speaker, or even more if it protrudes from the wall), given that the speakers are rear-ported?
• If I replace them with in-wall speakers (I was thinking DALI PHANTOM H-60 or H80), would they be OK to mount into wooden boards and not into drywall (in most instructions for mounting in-wall speakers, they talk about mounting into drywall - but I am integrating them into a wooden entertainment center)? And wouldn't the whole media wall resonate with the speakers - are there any steps I should take to avoid that?

On another note, I thought of building a mockup enclosure out of plywood to test the effect it would have on my speakers. Would this work to give me a good idea of the sound quality I should expect if I put them into the media wall, or will it be less indicative because it's not massive enough?

 

[TankTop5]

I saw the post and before reading it I was about to say TLSguy will be a long shortly

 

[Eppie]

I would definitely not mount an in-wall in the media cabinet. You will end up with some nasty resonances. It's difficult to say whether a bookshelf sitting inside a shelf will be any better than floor standers sitting in a nook. The floor standers will obviously have deeper bass extension. You will be compromising either way, so I would stick with the Oberon 5s if you like the sound and how they integrate with the Vokal center. Ease them as far out into the room as you can until your spouse complains. Speakers tend to get boomy when placed in cubies or nooks so you will be limited to experimenting with speaker placement and maybe some judicious use of EQ. The Vokal should be flush with the front of the media cabinet. My personal preference would be to have the media cabinet in the center between the speakers and the speakers free standing on either side of the media center. Covering the entire wall with the media center and placing the towers inside nooks is going to negatively impact the sound no matter what kind of speaker you use.

A photo of wall might help with suggesting alternatives?

 

[mr47]

I don't have any actual photos that may be relevant, but here's a screenshot from the most recent plan in HomeByMe (before I started worrying about placing the speakers inside):

Please ignore the low quality and lack of detail about doors and drawers in the media wall, that's how HomeByMe renders it in the free version.

As you can see, even if I were to limit the media cabinet to the center (which my wife wouldn't agree to), the space for speakers wouldn't increase significantly - there's a total of 45cm extra in the rightmost part, which translates to an additional 10cm on each side of each speaker. It would introduce other issues, such as offsetting the TV and the center speaker from the center of the couch (not a big deal, arguably).

To properly create enough space around the speakers, I would have to:

• Push the TV back towards the wall to give the speakers open space on the TV side, but then the viewing distance becomes an issue for the TV size (it's already on the small side for me - 77" at about 4.5m viewing distance)
• Remove the mid section of the cabinet (leaving, essentially, just the cabinets above the TV height). On top of the huge step back in the desired aesthetic (from a proper media wall to essentially a TV table with cabinets on top - the complete opposite of what my wife wants), we also lose quite a bit in storage space - which is important to us, since the apartment isn't big on that.

 

[TLS Guy]

I don't have any actual photos that may be relevant, but here's a screenshot from the most recent plan in HomeByMe (before I started worrying about placing the speakers inside):View attachment 74204

Please ignore the low quality and lack of detail about doors and drawers in the media wall, that's how HomeByMe renders it in the free version.

As you can see, even if I were to limit the media cabinet to the center (which my wife wouldn't agree to), the space for speakers wouldn't increase significantly - there's a total of 45cm extra in the rightmost part, which translates to an additional 10cm on each side of each speaker. It would introduce other issues, such as offsetting the TV and the center speaker from the center of the couch (not a big deal, arguably).

To properly create enough space around the speakers, I would have to:

• Push the TV back towards the wall to give the speakers open space on the TV side, but then the viewing distance becomes an issue for the TV size (it's already on the small side for me - 77" at about 4.5m viewing distance)
• Remove the mid section of the cabinet (leaving, essentially, just the cabinets above the TV height). On top of the huge step back in the desired aesthetic (from a proper media wall to essentially a TV table with cabinets on top - the complete opposite of what my wife wants), we also lose quite a bit in storage space - which is important to us, since the apartment isn't big on that.

The first thing I notice is that there is a hard surface right in front of the speakers, that is a major issue.

That space is similar to mine, but as you say smaller.

The other issue is that the left speaker, and may be the right, seem, to be recessed, at least on its left side. That is not going to work.

That really is crying out for an in wall solution. Take a look at Perlisten they, have some good in wall solutions for you. Most speakers these days are predicated on having a sub. I also found that having a high crossover to the sub was really helpful as it limited reflections from the wall surface, and the driver I chose was easily able to handle the somewhat high frequencies than usual.

I think this all needs more thought, otherwise you will waste a lot of money.

Is this new construction, or is that TV wall already built?

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

At a glance, the proposed speaker cubby idea will sound absolutely terrible. What would do is construct the media wall as a standard 2x4 framed construction and use some nice in walls. You can brace, and back box, and dampen to your hearts content.

 

[mr47]

The first thing I notice is that there is a hard surface right in front of the speakers, that is a major issue.

That space is similar to mine, but as you say smaller.

The other issue is that the left speaker, and may be the right, seem, to be recessed, at least on its left side. That is not going to work.

That really is crying out for an in wall solution. Take a look at Perlisten they, have some good in wall solutions for you. Most speakers these days are predicated on having a sub. I also found that having a high crossover to the sub was really helpful as it limited reflections from the wall surface, and the driver I chose was easily able to handle the somewhat high frequencies than usual.

I think this all needs more thought, otherwise you will waste a lot of money.

Is this new construction, or is that TV wall already built?

What hard surface in front of the speakers are you referring to? They are indeed a bit recessed in the picture, but I simply haven't updated the plan since the beginning of this discussion. I would have no problem having them flush with the wall, or even protruding forward a bit. But if protruding them forward would help, the remaining question is whether to make the cubbies as large as possible (as in the picture), or make them exactly the size of the speakers and line them with sound-absorbing material?

This is new construction, still in design stage.

At a glance, the proposed speaker cubby idea will sound absolutely terrible. What would do is construct the media wall as a standard 2x4 framed construction and use some nice in walls. You can brace, and back box, and dampen to your hearts content.

Having the media wall made out of drywall is not an option, unfortunately - the wife is interested in carpentry. And I am not sure that in-wall speakers in carpentry would work.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

What hard surface in front of the speakers are you referring to? They are indeed a bit recessed in the picture, but I simply haven't updated the plan since the beginning of this discussion. I would have no problem having them flush with the wall, or even protruding forward a bit. But if protruding them forward would help, the remaining question is whether to make the cubbies as large as possible (as in the picture), or make them exactly the size of the speakers and line them with sound-absorbing material?

This is new construction, still in design stage.



Having the media wall made out of drywall is not an option, unfortunately - the wife is interested in carpentry. And I am not sure that in-wall speakers in carpentry would work.

Well you could potentially use IW speakers in the carpentry. It would take some alternate integration but could work. If it’s a must to use a traditional speaker, I would make the opening as close to the size of the speaker and stuff it with acoustic foam, or polyfill etc. Then you could have some speaker grills made to cover the opening. A simple frame with magnets installed in the frame, and cabinet to hold it in place should be somewhat elegant.
One big problem in using traditional speakers in a case like this, even if the cubby is filled with material. Is that the baffle step compensation built into the speaker may not be successful being flush with, or even slightly protruding.
If the WAF is unfairly balanced, I would have a heart to heart to move the scale towards the middle. You may have more success by not building the wall out in the room at all, and just installing a normal-ish in room system. Doesn’t seem like that would be WAF approved, but definitely an option I would look at if not an IW system.