Nearfield Placement

I am building a new control room and the final dimensions are 18 feet wide by 22 1/2 feet deep with 8 1/2 foot celings. My question is what is the ratio for placing near fields in the room? How far from the front wall should they be? Thanks for your help :D Michael Greene

So you are not doing soffits right?

Thanks for your reply, No I am not using soffits at all. Just free standing stands or on a console. Speakers are KRK E-7 and surround with KRK V-8 Thanks, Michael Greene[/quote]

The further away from the wall the better. Wall reflections can have a very negative impact on your speaker response. Check out my Wall Bounce Calculator. Mounting the speakers on stands behind the desk is also preferable to sitting them on the bridge. Reflections from the console surface can also cause comb filtering problems. Thomas

Thanks for the link to the calculator. I guess it is a trade off between giving enough room behind the console for people to mingle, players to play and not feel crowded and optimizing the room for best sound. (Obviously the sound is most important). I will play with that at see what I can come up with. Thanks for the help. Michael Greene

Remember that high-freq sound doesn't come out of the back of the speakers. This means the wall behind them can be reflective to highs if you want, but try to put as much low and low-mid absorption as you can there. This may help balance out the overall live-ness of your room (don't want it too dead). If you put slat resonators, or insulation spaced away from the wall, you can have your speakers a little closer to that than if it was just the bare wall. Try to give them at least a foot from the wall surfaces. I'm kinda in the same situation- trying to find the best front-end setup, between speaker placement and wall treatment there's a million things you can do. If the wall is pretty much the way it's going to be, the best thing to do is just move the speakers around until you find a spot that really works. And remember that no matter how good your speaker placement is, the percieved sound will change as you move around the room anyway. ;) Hope this helps!

Your reply actually brings up another question. I have seen in the last year or so a number of designers putting in QRD's or a diffusor like that in the wall right behind the speaker position and I was always wondering what affect that would have and why. You make the point of a live front wall. Right now the front wall is dead but I can pull the panels off and retain that liveness. The back wall was going to be bass traps-diffusion and some panels to cut down on the reflections. Should I bypass the diffusors and go with all panels? I think the room is deep enough that I will gain something from the diffusors but I would love other opinions. Thanks to everyone for all there help. I am greatful. Michael Greene

I don't think diffusors or high-freq absorbers will do you much good mounted on the wall behind stand-mounted speakers. Might deaden the room if that's what you want. If the stuff that you have up on the front wall absorbs lows, and your room sounds good to you as it is, don't worry about it. On the back wall, try to absorb as much of the spectrum as you can.