With the fundamental bass trapping in place, I could now turn my attention to the front wall construction. In my design, I opted for flush mounting my speakers into the front wall due to several factors. One was the chimney breast taking up some of the front wall space, leaving empty cavities in the corners of the room, placing my speakers and lots of acoustic treatment within would make good use of this empty space. Secondly, there was some ugly pipework that I needed to hide, which could be achieved using slanted ceilings and an angled front wall. Finally, and perhaps the deciding factor is the acoustic benefits of flush mounting speakers, which I will talk more about in a later post. As long as you're not planning on changing your main speakers on a regular basis, there are not many downsides.
As seen in Blog 04, I had measured out the speaker and listening position to sit in a position that would have the least amount of influence, acoustically, from the size of the room. This was worked out with the help of REW Room Simulator.
I started by framing out the chimney and the 30 degree splayed walls, again, resting on neoprene strips to stop vibrations traveling through to the floor.
Next, I had to think about building in access panels to get to the back of the speakers once they were mounted in place and to read the gas meter! I decided on 'secret' push-to-open panels that would be at either end of the front wall.
At this stage, I also began to build the stands for the speakers into the wall. Again, everything was calculated so the audio 'centre' of the speaker would be at my ear level when seated. Angles had to be extremely accurate as I wouldn't get an opportunity to move the speakers if anything was off!
Once the speaker stands were built and secure, I began constructing the cabinet that the speakers would slot into. These are needed to help attach the speakers to the wall, ensuring an infinite baffle. You may see that the boxes jut out a bit from the framework, this is so it perfectly aligns with the wall as it's built out.
Finally, the slanted ceiling portion of the frame was installed as seen below, along with a rare glimpse of a clean floor!
Next time, we'll look at making most of that clean floor and installing some underfloor heating and engineered wood flooring.
Frank Leonard Walker