Soundvision: Room Surfaces & Reflections Check Guide 3 of 8

Reference: SV-REFLECT-01. Once the main hang and subs are sited, add the room's hard surfaces back in and see what actually bounces. This is expectation vs. reality territory — treat it as a planning aid, not a guarantee of what you'll measure on the day.

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Add & Orient Surfaces

Add each wall (and the ceiling, if relevant) as its own surface object, drawn to the real dimensions of the room. Enable the surface and check for a reflection. If nothing shows up, the surface's face is probably pointed the wrong way — reverse it and recheck. Use the box's flap/funnel-flex controls where available to physically pull energy back off a nearby wall rather than relying only on aim.

Calculate a Reflection by Hand

Reflection delay = (distance to the surface and back) ÷ speed of sound. A 6m one-way distance to a wall is a 12m round trip, which is about 21.7ms of delay at 343m/s. To read the reflection's level, mute the direct source and compare — differences in the high teens of dB down (roughly −18dB in a typical case) are common and usually not a practical problem; anything much hotter than that is worth addressing. Use the symmetry tool to mirror a reflection setup to the opposite wall instead of rebuilding it by hand — most rooms are symmetric enough for this to be a fair shortcut.

Cardioid Subs & Reflections

Switching a rear wall's sub array to cardioid usually helps that wall's reflection somewhat, but don't expect a dramatic change — most of a boomy room's character comes from the room itself, not just one array's front/back pattern. Check side walls separately from the back wall — a cardioid config tuned for the back lobe doesn't automatically fix a side reflection the model didn't originally account for.

Ceiling Reflections

Add the ceiling as a surface in any hall with a hard, reasonably low roof — this is a frequent blind spot since most people only check the floor plan view. Flying height matters a lot here. The same array flown noticeably lower under the roof can cut ceiling reflection dramatically compared to flying high — if you have the option, flying low is usually the simpler fix versus adding delay lines or extra downward aim. If flying low isn't possible (rigging/sightline constraints), more delay lines and more deliberate downward aim are the tradeoff — accept some ceiling spill and manage it with absorption or acceptance rather than fighting it indefinitely.

L2 Automatic Surface Handling

The L2 can automatically factor out (cancel) a surface's contribution — useful for checking "what if this reflection weren't a factor" without deleting the surface from the model. Walk a probe around the space while toggling this to build an intuition for which surfaces are actually driving the result versus which are negligible.

A last word on this: don't over-fit to the model. A two-meter difference between the "best" spot on the chart and where you'd actually stand isn't usually worth fighting for — use reflection modeling to catch the big, obviously-bad cases, then verify for real with a measurement mic on site.

Source: adapted from a purchased L-Acoustics Soundvision video tutorial series. Rewritten and condensed into a quick-reference workflow in Ryan's own words from the source material.