Flatscreen between speakers

@devinplombier 

Doesn’t your LG OLED have built-in works of art to make it look like a picture frame?

I think these OLEDs are brilliant and the very thin panels have almost no effect on sound transmission or reflections.  Sony’s version fires its main speaker through the panel.

I can see that my old Pioneer plasma may have some sonic effect, because it is glass faced and so thick and heavy.  But really, how much sound do most speakers manage to spray out sideways?  Or is the TV panel complicit in re-reflecting sound waves bounced back off the wall behind the listener?

I am thinking about (real) cinemas seating hundreds in a rectangular space, some well to the sides, where a centre speaker behind a fabric screen does make sense for some of the people some of the time.

@richardbrand I have a recent model OLED Samsung flatscreen with a very thin (scarily so) panel and covering it makes a noticeable improvement in the center image stereo music reproduction.  This may be unique to my room and the placement of my speakers relative to my flatscreen, but the improvement is on par with the benefits of covering my similarly sized plasma screen that preceded my current TV.  
kn

@spenav thanks.  The idea for the room and the setup has been evolving for a long time, starting before I even had a physical space to build it.  Frankly, even though 5.1 Blu-ray soundtracks sounded great pretty much from day one with multichannel DSP correcting for any latent room issues, it took a long time and a lot of work to get two-channel direct stereo to sound great even though the Arcam has a decent amplifier section.  It wasn’t until fairly recently that I determined the flatscreen was a big part of the problem.  I never listen to two channel music without the screen covered anymore.  Now both analog and digital two channel sound much better in direct stereo sourced from my external front ends than two channel digital processed by the Arcam, due in large part to substantial improvements in those sources combined with the screen covering trick.

Good luck with your efforts to get better sound.

kn

@rjinaz86323

Your situation is different. You have a near field setup. I have a very similar setup in my office. It sounds great. My speakers are about five feet apart on opposite sides of my monitor and the cones are just barely in front to the monitor. In this case it images deep behind the monitor. Sounds great. No, if I were trying to optimize for sitting back six feet... that would be a different story. 

@rjinaz86323. Putting absorbing panels on the side wall might help. Where to put them is the question: you will need a helper and a small mirror. While sitting in your listening position, have the helper slide the mirror along the wall until you can see the tweeter on your speaker. That will the general area where the panel needs to be located. Look up first reflection online if you need more information. 

@kubla36. Great panel, that was my original plan except that I was thinking of splitting it into three panels to make it even easier to handle. I wasn’t aware that these existed on amazon. Yours looks really good. I might combine both designs, we will see. Thanks.