In my current theater setup I have my EP 350 sitting in front of the wall I have my project screen set up on. Behind this wall is an unfinished storage area. If I were to cut a hole in the wall and mount the sub so that only the grill was exposed would that affect the performance of the sub? Both the speaker and port would be in the theater room but I just was curious if I would lose anything having the enclosure in the wall/storage room? Thanks

Most likely performance would be affected. Sub frequencies around 80hz and below are omnidirectional, they travel out in all directions and you can't detect that direction, just feel it. Think what happens when you throw a pebble into a pond, the ripples travel away in all directions around that location. That is what happens with low bass frequencies. So basically, I think some of your performance would be sacrificed by doing this.

Also, there is no guarantee the front wall is the best place for your sub in your room even if you don't enclose it in the wall. Did you try the "sub crawl" to determine this location, or just pick it by convenience?

Often when using one sub, placing it near a corner that is furthest from other openings into other rooms, may give you the best outcome. Multiple subs centered on opposite walls is more ideal, but often out of peoples budgets.

I did not try the sub crawl. I placed the sub there basicaly because my component rack is back in the unfinished area so it was easy to run my cables. What exactly is the sub crawl? Thanks

It helps you identify the best location for your subwoofer. The problem is that might be the side wall, back wall, etc. Many people just can't place the sub anywhere in the room for various reasons.

Basically, you place the subwoofer at the main seating location where you normally sit, either on the chair or move the chair and set in on the floor. Then, while playing a track with good low bass, you crawl around the perimeter of the room, listening for the location where the bass is the best sounding and not booooooomy. From there you just swap locations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV3oLLMgS-M

Hello friend. Welcome to the forum, I think I might be of assistance to you here.

You see when I purchased my Axiom HT system I had already built my HT closet complete with a cut-out at the bottom for my EP800 to sit with only the grill sticking out exactly as you discribed. When I got it put together it looked fantastic! However, the bass was severely lacking!

After a long, hard fought battle to increase it's performance, I finally had to accept that the location was all wrong. Sadly, I didn't really figure this out until one day when I walked into the closet while I was listening to music, and the bass almost knocked me down! "WOW" I thought to myself, "so this is where all the bass is hiding out"!!!

In the end I wound up dragging the EP800 out and sticking it behind my couch. And the difference was like going from an EP150 to a full blown EP800!!! I would estimate the amount of lost bass frequencies inside that closet at something close to 80% (this is a seat-of-the-pants figure, I didn't have any sound level equipment at my disposal). I will admit that had the difference been closer to 50% I might have kept it in the closet just to keep the asthetics of the lay-out. But the difference was too night and day to ignore. I really wanted it to work underneath the TV, but it just didn't.

So now the ONLY way I would ever say, "go for it" to someone asking whether he should do something like this would be in a WAF scenario where the subwoofer either had to be hidden inside a wall, or there be no subwoofer aloud in the system period. It is at least better than not having a subwoofer. I mean you can go back and read my impressions of my EP800 and you'll see that it did improve the sound of my system a great deal. However after finding out how much I was missing out on, that's the only scenario I would ever personally give my approval to. If there is ANY other location you can put your subwoofer in, in your HT, try it there first! No matter how sub-prime it may be, it's still sure to be better than hiding it away inside a wall.

I hope my mistake can help you avoid making your own. Good luck with finding a compromise that will suit your needs.