# room dynamics - speaker placement & soffit questions



## sandbag (Aug 2, 2009)

This is great fun! Am on my third redesign to reflect your suggestions. So now ... what are your thoughts on shifting the speaker array off the room centerline, biasing it 2.5 feet towards one sidewall. By shifting the mains, center and sub this way in my 16' wide room [finished room under current design will be 16' wide x 17 long x 8.75' high] I will have plenty of furniture-free space on the seating access side. 

I am already concerned about the nearly square width v length and am considering some form of solid diffusion on the rear wall - possibly a louvered wood slat arrangement in front of a softer rear wall??? I really want to avoid physically narrowing the room.

What about soffits? I notice most designs include perimeter soffits, which solves a lot of wiring and some ventilation issues, but I'm not clear on whether it is preferable to build the soffits to first leaf specs (open space with insulation behind two layers of 5/8 sheet rock w/ green glue) or dropping the from the first leaf ceiling and wall surfaces, using something like 1/4 3/8 panelling, soundboard or perfboard to act as a form of bass trap?

Hope to learn your insights.


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## ScruffyHT (Sep 23, 2008)

If I am hearing you right ... you will have access down one side of the room and the chairs will be offset to the other side so you want to do the same to the speakers ?

I would leave them equidistant from the side walls as you will still have one chair in the sweetspot no matter what you do ... however your acoustic treatments will be more symetrical ... your first reflection point for example would not be the same if you had one set of speakers farther from the wall than the other

As far as soffits ... it is best to sound isolate the room first and then add the soffits after ... you can use them for broadband bass traps as well as lighting, HVAC etc


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## sandbag (Aug 2, 2009)

Thanks - you reinforced my thinking on this issue.


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## chadcummings (Apr 26, 2008)

Finished room is 16'? I started with 16' before my dual drywall and treatments in my design.

I would also look at really beefing up your room treatments as with an almost square room you will have a lot of reinforced reflection points and nulls. The better your treatments are the better you will be with the sound no matter what in this size room.


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