Flush Mounted Moniter Speakers

[TimWalter]

Going thru some major changes. In short, I sold my business and will be dedicating my life from here on out to writing, recording and performing music (good thing I have all that time, I'll need it lol.)

I bought a house (close in late April) and plan to build a studio in the basement. I bought 3 books on recording studio design, not the least Recording Studio Design by Philip Newell. Its 800+ pages of incredibly technical stuff with complex formulas and all. I was once trained as a mechanical engineer, so back in the day such weighty subjects were my norm, but its been a long time. lol.

ANYHOW, I'm still plowing through the book, but Mr Newell is an adamant advocate for flush mounted monitor speakers (he hates the term soffit mounted, saying it is technically incorrect). When he lays out the technical reasons, its hard to argue -don't get reflections from speakers bouncing off the front wall and adding to the already troublesome comb filtering issues in most any room. Besides that, all the photos in the book of studios with flush mounted speakers look really cool and professional. I do plan on having folks come to my studio to record, so first impressions are important. (NOTE: I recently auditioned for lead guitar for a local band, and I sensed a very critical review of all my gear as I set up for the audition.... first impressions do matter, for better or worse, IMHO... I did pass the audition, so I guess I was good enough in spite of my Japanese BADD brand boutique build guitar that no one has ever heard of... built by luthier Toshio who also makes Bossa basses http://bossa-usa.com/... but I digress).

Any fellow Taxi denizens have any thoughts/input on flush mounted speaker monitors?
Tim Walter

[Len911]

I don't know Tim, though a near field monitor seems less complicated.

What's on the backside? Will you be rattling the rafters,lol !

Is there special flush mounted designed monitors? If not how will sealing off the backside of the box from the front side affect the monitor's sound? What happens when the backside sound is conducted from the backside wood studs and transferred along the side of the room to the frontside?

"...the ideal mounting for a low-frequency loudspeaker driver would be a rigid flat panel of infinite size with infinite space behind it. This would entirely prevent the rear sound waves from interfering (i.e., comb filter cancellations) with the sound waves from the front...the driver would need a relatively stiff suspension to provide the restoring force which might have been provided at low frequencies by a smaller sealed or ported enclosure, so few drivers are suitable for this kind of mounting..."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker_enclosure

Otoh, reference monitors are just that, a reference. Their sole purpose is for use in mixing to achieve the ideal sound for all applications. Whether they are accurate sonically or not doesn't really matter unless they help you to achieve their primary task. The ideal monitor imo is one that you can tweak to it's sweet spot, to achieve the goal of the most ideal sound for most applications. And if you have to tweak a high dollar sonically accurate monitor to sound like crap, or a cheap crap monitor to sound it's best, I would prefer the latter,lol! It's more intuitive.

The problem with the flush mounted imo is that you have no way of telling where you are at until they are installed, unlike a nfm where you might find plenty of online reviews that should be consistent in use as a near field application.
Near field at a reasonable volume isn't going to be influenced by the room as much.

[andygabrys]

hey Tim,

i would visit some studios and look at what they have, and look at how big the control rooms are, and what the geometry of the rooms are, as well as what they have for near-field and mains monitoring.

it would be fine if you were building a new room that was say 20' x 25' or bigger for a control room and were going to be doing some generous geometrical mods and a lot of sound treatment, and wanted then to examine a pair of wall mounted mains - go for it.

But if your room is smaller than that - why go to the expense and trouble of buying $20k+ speakers to put in the walls if they aren't going to be close to true? you could buy several excellent near / mid fields for less than the price of one set of big mains.

besides that - what len911 said. especially the end. if you are not designing the room geometrically and its not big, consider the impact of the room, and what is ultimately going to be best.

[TimWalter]

Thanks guys. I may have not communicated well. What I am talking about is mounting my 2 Blue Sky Sat 6.5 near field monitors (that I already have, thanks to Mike Senior's recommendations, thanks Andy for recommending his book) in the wall similar to what is shown in the attached photos. The supposed advantage is eliminating the bounce back from the front wall, which of course I have sound absorbers at the first reflection point in my current room on the front wall, but the concept of flush mounting near fields is its supposedly better, according to the author of this book. The cost wouldn't be much, just some 2/4's and sheet rock, etc, and I can do all that myself, since I don't have a full time job now (lol). The drawback is house resale for the future (as will be the window between the control room and the recording room lol), but who thinks about that... just kidding, I am thinking about it, but am doing these mods with makeing reversing them as simple as possible.... is my thought.

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[TimWalter]

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[TimWalter]

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[TimWalter]

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Last one.. hope I didnt over do it.. each one of these is somewhat different, and still not exactly the way mine would look, but still very similar .sorry if I overposted.
Thanks.

[andygabrys]

HI Tim,

I know what you meant - I just don't think its a great idea. Mains are high powered, i.e. loud. And except for some mixers who like them all the time (usually seems like the Ocean Way monitors designed and tuned by Allen sides) most people just use them to get excited and to play the track for the artist.

Whereas the monitors you have are great near-fields, and just mounting them on stands, getting them a couple feet off the walls, out of the corners, and monitoring at reasonable volume is probably a better long term idea.

If you have time to burn I think I would spend some time working on some DIY electronics - if you are trying to draw people in (i.e. artists) and have a rack of a couple 1176's (especially the blue stripe cause there were so few of them made and thanks to people like CLA they are sort of legendary) and a few cool preamps, that is probably going to do as much for the cause as mounting the speakers in the walls. Esepcially if you are planning on maybe moving sometime. You know bout hairball audio? http://www.hairballaudio.com/shop/

[Russell Landwehr]

The drawback is house resale for the future (as will be the window between the control room and the recording room lol), but who thinks about that... just kidding, I am thinking about it, but am doing these mods with makeing reversing them as simple as possible.... is my thought.
t]

Instead of a window, a local guy has two-way CCTV cameras and monitors between the control room and booths.

[eeoo]

Every studio I've been to with big flush mounted speakers only use them to impress clients, all the actual mixing/monitoring work gets done on the near or mid field set up.