Home Theatre Speaker Install Question
 

So a buddy of mine is designing a home theater room above his garage. It is a 3 stall garage, so the room is pretty big - but the end of the garaged has a sloped roof. The room ends up being about 23 x 17 with a 7.5 foot ceiling. The end with the sloped roof is being walled off and it will have a triangular crawl behind it for HVAC and some built shelves and things.

The question is - can you build speaker alcoves for the front three speakers without messing up your sound? He wants towers with a large center up front as well as one or two Rel HT subs. (the four surround and four Atmos will most likely be architectural built-in speakers). He was originally looking at Paradigm speakers, but they have rear ports and I told him they might sounds funny in a 5 sided wood alcove. There are a couple brands (Focal, Elac) with front ports and of course Magico is fully sealed (Only $14k for A1's and a center channel!), so I pointed him that way for now.

I was just wondering if anyone could share some thoughts and experiences with speaker alcoves. Will front port solve the issue?

Thank you.

-Geoff

The short answer is Yes. For a home theater you can have the speakers in an alcove. I have a center channel (b&w) positioned that way.
However, you have to make sure that you pick the right speakers. Ported speakers or dipoles will not work.

Yes - for speaks take a look at JBL Everest. They were made to be mounted in cabinetry.

simple answer - you can - but it is not the best idea if you can avoid it No speaker is designed to deal with what the alcove will do to it acoustically. It has little to do with the port location. Much better to use a flush mounted speaker cut into a solid wall of some type - the alcove. If using a free standing speaker - keep it free standing - as intended. Otherwise cut a good in wall type speaker into a solid surface and use it as intended.I could be mistaken - but I do not believe the Everest is designed to be cut into a cabinet. I would either go free standing, or in wall - not in an alcove - it is not the correct application for any speaker.

Agreed; alcoves are the “Kiss of Death” for a Speaker IMO.

Home Theatre Speaker Install Question
 

To the OP: This site is primary an audio site. In the forum thread below (from a home theater oriented site) several folks share ideas on the best way to accomplish what you want for your home theater.

In that thread there is a link to a site that describes baffle walls. Those are very common on THX certified theaters and may be a solution for you.

Here is a quote about waffle walls from that site:

“A baffle wall is essentially a false wall into which the screen speakers (i.e. left, center and right) are mounted. It is a core component of a THX certified cinema.”

Sorry for the slow reply. Thank you for the baffle wall tip. I think that is the ticket. The way his roof slopes down, it should work perfectly - he was going to put some kind of wall in the room anyways due to the roof slope.

-Geoff

I used B&W 804s for my back 2 built into rear-wall cabinet/shelves because they are front-ported and they work great. Also, their custom install speakers are generally sealed or front ported and built specifically for such situations.