Room shape..Acoustics

[Juanbk]

The wall mount will affect the sound because of proximity to the wall. Actually the biggest effect is likely to come from proximity to the corner given the size of your space is going to be small.

I have no experience with Phantoms or Reactors so I can't tell you how much the sound will be affected but it is going to affect the bass and possibly up to the upper bass/low mids because of the small size of the space. I would suggest not mounting them high on the wall but I think you are going to be limited in a small area because you're likely to want to put furniture of some kind on the wall below them. The closer on the wall to another room surface, either very high on the wall so close to the ceiling or on the wall close to a side wall, the greater the effect will be and if you mount them close to the ceiling and a side wall the effect will be greatest. Given the small space I can understand the decision to wall mount but I would recommend keeping as much distance as you can between them and the ceiling and slide walls, but you also need some distance between them for a good stereo image. Small rooms are difficult to work with because you don't have much space in which you can locate speakers and there's no choice but to place them closer to the walls than you would in a larger room.

On the bright side, the photos I've seen of the Reactor floor stands show the stands as being fairly low. You could take a hint from that and mount the wall mounts so the speakers are the same height from the ceiling as the stands would place them from the floor. That way the reinforcement from proximity to the ceiling would be the same as the reinforcement you would get from the floor if you had them on stands and the reinforcement from the floor would be the same as you would get from the ceiling if they were on stands. I assume that Devialet have chosen the height of the floor stands for the Reactors in order to provide an appropriate amount of reinforcement from the floor so I think mounting them that distance from the ceiling would work well. If you have to mount them close to a side wall, try to mount them a little further from the ceiling in order to compensate a bit for the additional reinforcement from the wall.

I'm sorry I can't give you precise recommendations about mounting distances because I don't have experience with your speakers. I'd recommend experimentation first in order to find out where you would get best results but that's going to be difficult because you have to fix wall mounts to the wall and that makes moving them to test different locations pretty well impossible. You might try making an enquiry to Devialet support asking them for recommendations on how far to place the wall mounts from the ceiling and side wall in order to achieve an optimal sound balance and if you can't get them that far from one or both of those surfaces, get them as close to the recommended placement as possible.

Once they are mounted on the wall, you can still adjust the sound a fair bit with tone controls and also with absorption in the room. Physical acoustic room treatments may not be an option in a very small space but a good thick natural fibre rug or carpet on the floor will help a lot and furniture choices can also help a lot. You may be able to use a few wall mounted acoustic panels to help. Big panels probably wouldn't work but some manufacturers make wall mounted panels around 600 mm/2 ft square and you may be able to make use of some of them. Normally I'd recommend against placing absorption panels at first reflection points but that may be the best way to go in a really small space. Some manufacturers also make triangular panels to mount in corners to help control bass and they may be a good option for you in your room. If you happen to be a reader with a bookcase and a lot of books, then books can provide some absorption and also a bit of diffusion if they're different shapes and sizes so they make an irregular pattern on the shelves and you may be able to experiment with the location of the bookcase a bit.

There are compromises associated with small rooms but there are compromises associated with every room when it comes too acoustics. Nearly all of us would benefit from a bigger room and that's an inescapable fact of audio life but we all have to make the most of the room we have and you should be able to get good results in a small space. You may have to work a little harder at it in order to do so.

Hello!, thank you for such a detailed reply, about the placing that’s what i was thinking, to place the wall mount as low as possible, but there’s a catch, if you take a look at the gecko wall mount, its angled downwards, so if you place them low, they’ll be pointing towards the floor, I’m not the biggest fan of the legs, they take to much space, and the looks aren’t of my liking.