To soffit or not to soffit, that is the question...

I've been taking in all the room designs that I could find on here and I've noticed that all the designs incorporate soffit mounted monitors. The general consensus among my engineer friends is that they've never heard a good soffit room. In my experience too, at a couple of big studios the soffits have been less than impressive (though I was blown away by the setup at Abbey Road!). I also found a thread on PSW where Barefoot stated he was no longer convinced soffit mounting was the way to go... Before I found this info I had designed my new control room borrowing a design John had done for HugoInside and flipping it about a bit. I've attached a JPG, and the SmartDraw file below. So, the question is, with the size of my room, is Soffit mounting going to be better than free standing? Also, what would be a good free standing design for my room?

Also if you're interested, pictures of where we'll building... http://richtamblyn.com/files/admiralpark/ Cheers, Rich

Rich - I soffit mount because I believe it works better than not soffit mounting. I've done it countless times and it's proven to me, at least, to be a better way to go. The imaging is far superior, the bass response is more even and more accurate. cheers john

Thanks for the response John. I am going to soffit. I think I'm going to go for a system similar to Dave's Bluefield Studio with the bezels and so give me some different monitoring options in the future. Cheers, Rich