My future HT room is 14' x 18'. I want to have all speakers hidden from view as part of the design. I also need to make sure to leave enough space on the 18' length to accommodate two rows of seating without it being too cramped.

I don't think I have the luxury of building my false-wall out 2' - 3' feet to hide the speakers. I plan to use boxed/sealed in-wall speakers for the LCR and two regular in-room subs. I am trying to come up with a technique to hide the subs. I have some attic crawl space behind the screen wall as well as one of the side walls. My current thought is to build cut-outs for the subs as shown in this quick sketch.

http://i784.photobucket.com/albums/yy128/RobertS_Tx/SubCutouts.jpg

Does anyone know of any issues with this idea? I don't know if this will negatively effect the sound or not. I would place the subs in the cutouts and then cover with AT fabric treatments.

Also, does anyone have a good recommendation on the best location for the two subs? I could have them both on the screen wall firing toward the listening positions.

Thanks
Robert

Why not setup it up as an infinite baffle?

There is plenty of information over in the "Do It Yourself" section.

Hmmm... never seen those before. Looks pretty interesting. They are definitely an option but I more than likely won't head down the DIY route on the speakers.

As a note on the cut-outs - they would be completely framed into the room. I would use 2x4 framing and then do the 5/8" DD, Green glue approach to basically make them part of the room and just let the subs sit in there.

Robert

I am the furthest from an expert, but it seems to me if you placed them under the screen on both sides of the center channel but between the front left and right it would be good. It would go left front, sub, center, sub, right front. My friend has his set up this way, though they aren't in wall, and it not only looks symmetrical but you don't have sub woofer frequencies coming at each other from different directions possibly cancelling each other or combining to create some kind of super wave in certain spots of the room. (if that's even possible, I told you I'm no expert)

Have a look at my theater post in my sig, I put a pair of 15" subs in the wall and they work very well. I went with middle of the side wall to try to lessen reflections front to back, and although I plan to add some traps to the front corners of the room, I already have plenty of bass. The one thing I could see being a problem with IB is that the subs are directly coupled to the walls, so it would make it harder to contain the bass. Not that my solution is the perfect one, but it certainly left that floor space free that the subs used to take up in my old theater.

Have a look at my theater post in my sig, I put a pair of 15" subs in the wall and they work very well. I went with middle of the side wall to try to lessen reflections front to back, and although I plan to add some traps to the front corners of the room, I already have plenty of bass. The one thing I could see being a problem with IB is that the subs are directly coupled to the walls, so it would make it harder to contain the bass. Not that my solution is the perfect one, but it certainly left that floor space free that the subs used to take up in my old theater.

I had no problem containing the backwave for my IB sub. Now granted it did cost me a bit of space, but the experience of having those four 18" drivers rumble is like no other.

Inside of the sub chamber...
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb308/mdrueen/IMG_0098.jpg

And outside:

http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb308/mdrueen/IMG_0266-1.jpg

Have a look at my theater post in my sig, I put a pair of 15" subs in the wall and they work very well. I went with middle of the side wall to try to lessen reflections front to back, and although I plan to add some traps to the front corners of the room, I already have plenty of bass. The one thing I could see being a problem with IB is that the subs are directly coupled to the walls, so it would make it harder to contain the bass. Not that my solution is the perfect one, but it certainly left that floor space free that the subs used to take up in my old theater.

Your link was a big help. That is exactly the concept I was thinking about. Do you have any issues with the sound of the subs firing being localized to that location? Mine will be covered with AT fabric and I don't want people to realize (or hear) that there are subs behind the wall at that location. IMHO, one should not be able to tell where the bass is coming from. That is my goal.

Robert