Wayne Parham Messages: 18835 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Surface treatments are useful for reducing reflections from about 300Hz upwards. But they do not work at bass frequencies, not at all. You can't get a surface treatment to work much below midrange. It would have to be very thick - like measured in feet - to work even down to 300Hz.
Are you using panel absorbers? That's the best way to get damping at bass frequencies. And even so, there will definitely be measureable self-interference ripple from the boundaries. Surface treatments won't work anywhere close to 50Hz - Maybe down to 300Hz or so if the absorbent wedges on your walls are very thick.
Honestly, the thing that helps the most in your setup is the fact that your speakers are mounted in the wall with the baffle flush (or nearly flush). This removes the possibility of reflection from the wall that would normally be behind the speakers, which is the most offensive reflection in the lower midrange. But I still would prefer the subs be left separate because they're more flexible that way. You can place them in a Welti configuration (e.g. middle of each side wall), or just outside the mains to mitigate self-interference from the adjacent wall, for example.