I'm building a dedicated HT room and I was thinking of using the empty space under the stairs to the basement and build an alcove for the subwoofer. I have an EP350 v2. Here's the pic of the space...



I would remove one of the studs and reframe an opening, then soundproof the back to ensure sound is kept inside the room.

Would that make sense? The goal is to maximize space in the 13 x16 room and I don't know where to put the sub.

A sub is non directional, and as such, radiates sound in all directions. Confining it in an enclosure will probably not give you an optimal result. In fact, just it's distance to the nearest wall will have a big change on how it sounds.

To go even further, the general placement in the room itself is equally important and some people spend a lot of time moving the sub around the room finding the optimal spot for the sub so that it is least effected by nulls in the room that are caused by reflections canceling out the big lazy sound waves of the lower frequencies. For instance, in my small square room, if I place my sub between my TV and my right speaker, I get bass in the corners of the room loud enough to make your shirt shake but sitting on the couch I get very disappointingly weak bass. Simply moving it about 4 feet over to the right and a bit closer to the rear wall so that it is closer to a corner smoothed out the bass in the room so it is much better in my actual seating position. The difference can be very dramatic.

Personally, it is not something I would do but sometimes you have to do what you must.

Edit:
You can purchase subs designed to work in a wall or an enclosure as you describe. However, the 350 is a great sub and I bet when properly placed, will sound better than most wall units. Why waste it unless you really need to reclaim that bit of space?

Hi Subnet, I do agree with Murph - it may work but likely will not be optimal.

I was in the same situation when I was building my HT and actually built an enclosure into the bottom of my equipment rack to hold my EP500. I did that based on some bad advice from other sources (not this forum) suggesting that a modern day receiver could compensate for any placement issues - WRONG!!! I could tell within the 1st 2 minutes this was not a good place to have the sub. Bass was very 'boomy' at my main listening position. I then pulled it out of the enclosure, did the subwoofer crawl and found a spot that worked well both sonically and ergonomically. The enclosure I built is now used for video game accessory storage.

most likely you would be sacrificing the performance of the sub by enclosing it...

Enclosing it isn't so much the problem per se, as might be the location. As funny as it might sound, doing the crawl isn't a bad idea...that's after you finish the basement.

Just spend a little extra and get a good looking subwoofer and make it part of the furniture. I did this in my living room and it works fine. It's not where I planned to put it, but it ended up in a better location.

Yeah, just buy an EP-800 and tell visitors that it's an original monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey signed by Stanly Kubrick!

With stuffed monkeys touching it?

Actually, that could be a pretty cool idea for a 'themed' custom home theater install!

EP800 with Monkeys. DOUBLE PLUS AWESOME!

snazzed