[karlsaudio]

I could not find this topic anywhere but I'm curious as to what the differences are in acoustics between a wall mounted speaker and one on the floor or stand mounted. How much does the wall effect the sound? I will be going from floor standing towers to small bookies sitting on wall mounted shelves. The wall is of standard 2x4 stud/sheetrock construction.

 

[karlsaudio]

Anyone? Bueller? I'm just curious if I'm better off stand mounting the speakers rather than putting them on a shelf.

 

[RayDunzl]

For which position are they designed?

 

[mtbdudex]

For which position are they designed?

Exactly, if your speaker is designed to be mounted on a wall then you may not have to deal with potential SBIR issues, that is one main reason people build a baffle wall.

 

[karlsaudio]

That's what I'm worried about. Have not decided on a specific model yet but, it will be a "bookshelf". I would like them on stands and away from the wall. Wife wants speakers about the thickness of a sticker on the wall. (not doing in walls). So the compromise is having the speakers on a shelf backed right up to the wall.
I will keep working on this.


Thanks!

 

[RayDunzl]

Get stand mounted, put them against the wall.

Then when you want to, pull them out where they sound good.

 

[karlsaudio]

Get stand mounted, put them against the wall.

Then when you want to, pull them out where they sound good.

It's not a bad idea. Just kind of a PITA. It got me thinking of some kind of mount that telescopes out from the wall a foot or two. I will do some heavy research on this this weekend.

 

[RayDunzl]

It's not a bad idea. Just kind of a PITA.

Sounds to me like there's a little PITA in the WIFE.

 

[fbov]

This is a common issue in speaker design, so there are good references available (look up "baffle step compensation"). Scroll down the HTGuide link to the excerpted figures from Floyd Toole's book, Sound Reproduction. The first pair show what happens when a free-standing speaker design ("full" space) is flush mounted on a wall, without any changes to accommodate flush mounting. It's not pretty, and it gets worse as you go from flush mount to on-wall mounting to shelf mounting...
http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php?28655-A-Guide-to-HTguide-com-Completed-Speaker-Designs

For an optimized design, the flush mounted speaker would have the same flat frequency response, but at a higher SPL, at teh level of the bass peak shown in fig. 12.8B. That's the great advantage to flush mounting a passive speaker - the freestanding crossover design requires as much as a -6dB hit in sensitivity to achieve flat response, due to low frequencies radiating in all directions. That results in 6dB greater output when the same drivers are flush mounted, using an flush-mount optimized crossover design.

That said, "small bookies sitting on wall mounted shelves" is the worst option shown, due to strong dips in frequency due to out-of-phase rear wall and shelf edge reflections.

And now you know! I can't recommend Toole's book too highly...

HAve fun,
Frank

 

[karlsaudio]

Thanks Frank! I will do some 'splainin' tonight and try to convince her.