Soffit construction, worthwhile?

When the sound pressure from your speakers hits a wall not only does it reflect back into the room, but a certain portion of the energy travels along the wall's surfaces ... this is referred to as laminar flow

When the pressure wave from the laminar flow of any and all walls meets with the pressure wave of the laminar flow from the ceiling at the wall/ceiling interface ... the output is summed and greatly increased due to the combining of the two energy waves and is reflected back into the room increasing the delay/decay times (RT60's) over and above what they should be

The increased RT60 times is perceived as a ringing and needs to be absorbed and reduced to the normal RT60 levels for the room ... also this extra energy reflected back into the room is out of time and phase similar to the first reflection off the side walls but with twice as much energy as it is the sum of the side walls and the ceiling ... side wall and floor interfaces can also aggravate this condition ... but lets keep it simple for now.

Back in the early 90's when I ventured into Home Theater I drove my self crazy swapping IC's, speaker cables, power conditioners, and amps before I realized that the room was a component and needed to be treated

Even after applying treatments for first reflections on the side walls and base traps in the corners I still had a harsh irritating sound and didn't know where to turn

I called ASC whose treatments I was using and after describing my room and set up ... without hesistation Chris said fix the wall ceiling interface and the harshness will go away

Their recommendation was encircled the perimeter of the room at the wall/ceiling interface with ASC sound flags ... which I did and the problem was corrected immediately

They now have a new product ... a soffit type box treatment ... Soffit Treatments ... that may be even more effective and is much more WAF acceptable ... my room with the Sound Flags looks like House and Garden's meets Hell's Kitchen

You may also want to take a step back and before applying any room treatment perform an MATT (Musical Articulation Test Tone ) test (about $75) ... which will tell you what your problem frequencies are and exactly how much treatment your room will require

Here is info on MATT Test


Also remember every room has at least 5 major issues that need to be addressed before your equipment can rise to it's fullest potential

Bass peaks and valleys and extended Bass modal ringing, first reflections (don't forget ceilings and floors), RT60/decay time, Echo Slap and Comb filtering

Plenty of good reading at Ethan Winer's Real Traps site and the ASC site ... spend some time with the Pros ...basic room treatments ... before you spend your money

You now have the "Keys to the Kingdom" free of charge

If you look at my virtual system then it may give you some ideas.

Soffit mount is what professionals and acoustic engineers prefer to use for high fidelity setups in studios. There are very solid physics reasons for soffit mounting speakers. It is the only way to get a true point source imaging for lower midrange and bass response. The conventional approach with freestanding speakers almost always has holes (suckouts) in the frequency response and the baffle diffraction is always there (affects imaging). You can do it yourself but you'll need to do a lot of research.

Here is an example of what is usually done by a professional acoustic engineer in a studio. They recommend soffit mount but not all clients are prepared to go to these kind of lengths to get good sound.

An alternative is to use near-fields and place them well out into the room and very close to the listener. Many studios use nearfields - this is cheapest and simplest approach. Unfortunately near-fields only work for one listener - so you can't impress the clients without a proper well designed acoustic setup and properly designed soffit mount systems sound the best.

My room and also Mikel's room has soffits that act as bass trapping. I also use mine for cable runs. You might want to look into something like we have.

Both your room and Mike's room are beautiful. I am currently consulting with Rives and this is what they suggested.

Unless your using UREI or Weslake Monitors, dont do it Soffits are for Studio monitors...