Any issues having stacked stone wall behind speakers
 

Greetings. I am in the process of finalizing plans for finishing our basement.

With the "look" we have in mind, we want to have the wall behind the speakers (home theater and 2 channel system) be a stacked stone wall similar to this:

https://www.houzz.com/photos/clean-r...vw-vp~39655725

https://www.houzz.com/photos/richmon...hvw-vp~5482539

My speakers will be out into the room 2' from the back wall.

Part of me thinks the stone wall may actually help with diffusion.

Will something like this sound good, or are there significant issues that I am not thinking about?

I'd love your feedback- (for what it's worth, I don't want to have a heavily "treated" room at least in terms of the look. My space will be a wide-open 1,000 sf room, so it isn't a dedicated theater/audio room).

I would be worried about reflections from the stone. It could have quite a negative impact on the overall acoustic and make the room too bright.

Is there a way you could do the stone wall but add some panels behind the speakers and bass traps in the corners?

Any issues having stacked stone wall behind speakers
 

I would think that the irregularities of the stone should work as diffusers.
Some speakers are designed in a way that diffusers are desired/required (MBLs for example). So the kind of speaker that you own plays a part.

But I would think that stone surface is hard and reflective so that is also a factor.

Everything in your room (room dimensions, furniture, wall and floor treatments, equipment placement, materials, etc.) will affect the sound.
And that is why room correction software exists. Some digital preamps come with that feature.

But you can also add room correction to your existing system via other means such as Roon. With room correction you can have the "look" that you are looking for AND optimize the sound in your (very large) room at the same time.

Fwiw, many of today's SOTA performing arts center use "room correction" software to improve the sound.

I think it might complement playback of rock, in particular.

Room correction software will never perform as well as a well treated room. While they can compensate some issue, they cannot fix temporal issue such as reflection. Fixing those will have a massive improvement on the sound.

I have an MEN220, so that’d be in full use no matter what.

My wife would likely veto any obvious treatments.

Also, there is really only one corner (front right) as the room opens up to the left in an “L” shape.

Your comment about brightness makes me nervous and I have a sensitivity to brightness and have often looked to “tame” any brightness in my system in the past.

I had my pair of Tannoy Canterbury situated in a room with similar stone design as pictured. Can't say that they sounded noticeably different than in another room that did not have stone. Stone is not optimal but it is not as bad as having glass windows or doors at the first reflection points.

You mentioned that it will not be a dedicated room so I am not sure if you intend to listen from the "sweet spot" or not"

If yes, then:
If it is possible to incorporate some aesthetically pleasing acoustic treatments in the form of art or similar, at the primary reflection points that would be visible in a mirror that is moved along the wall by someone while you are sitting in the sweet spot, that would go a long way to taming the most annoying harshness that causes fatigue.

It is not so much the reflected sound itself as the confusing information from the slight delay of the sound that has to be processed by the brain that causes fatigue. The spatial cue CPU gets overloaded. :D

Any issues having stacked stone wall behind speakers
 

Here is a write up about room correction. It addresses reflection better than I can.

https://lyngdorf.com/news-what-is-room-correction/

As that article explains, not all room correction software are the same.

And then comes the question of what a "well treated room" means. A well treated room can mean destroying the "look" that the OP wants. It can also mean spending thousands of dollars in a room and still find out that it needs thousands of dollars more (it is a huge room after all).

I am not a proponent of trying to fix everything with room correction. The idea is to do the best you can with proper placement of your speakers and some judicious use of some treatment (e.g., that concrete floor needs a carpet) and then use roon correction to improve the sound. I have yet to see a system that cannot benefit from it.

I should note that some manufacturers that do not offer room correction in their products use the argument that room correction is bad. Perhaps it is bad only because they do not have the know how to implement it in their products.

New performance venues built today incorporate the latest in acoustics and engineering. They have well thought out room dimensions, panels hanging from ceiling that can be adjusted depending on type of music being performed, they use hand-picked building materials including for the seats. And yet, they still use electronics to adjust the final sound. That alone tells me that no matter how well designed and how much treatment you put in, you can still do better with judicious use of technology.

Thank you Serge.

I definitely will be sitting in the sweet spot! Good to hear you didn't have issues with stone behind your setup.

I do have a window at the first reflection point on the right, and the room is wide open to the left. Not ideal, but I will work on a treatment solution for the window to the right (if even a temporary panel).