We have just got a FAKE wall built in our living room to house the front Speakers all our equipment and the Plasma TV. I would like to house the speakers in the wall and only have Speaker material flush with the wall so the whole are is flat, what my question is - Will it sound ok? would I be better mounting them on the outside of the wall?

[miceri]

Genrally, it is advised to leave 120 Degress of open space in front of the speakers so that they can prodcue sound as designed too, with the tweaters at end level. So, having them enclosed / flush should not cause a problem there.

However, what might be your problem is the amount of space behind the speakers... Are they ported speakers of not? Depending on your speakers you might get alot of boomy bass...

They are Sony Speakers, that came with the amp that we bought, front Left and Right and the centre speaker and 2 for the rear. Not sure if they are ported or not? what does that mean? sorry im new to all this

[clockworks]

Ported speakers have a hole (port), usually on the back, but sometimes on the front. It's normally an inch or two in diameter, and is used to "tune" the bass output.
A rear-firing port, pointing into an enclosed cavity, can sound nasty. If your speakers have rear ports, filling the space behind them with insulating material (Rockwool) will reduce the problem. Even if the speakers aren't ported, you might find that some Rockwool will improve the sound.

It might be a good idea to isolate the speakers from the studwork/shelf with some blobs of Blutak, to prevent the fram from resonating.

Make sure that you use proper speaker grille material, and that the hole in the frame is bigger than the speaker - you need to avoid the sound from the speaker bouncing back from the edges of the frame.

Thanks for all your help, will let you know how I get on, and put some photos up of the finished work