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Do any speakers image/sound-stage close to walls?

I'm about to spend a huge amount of $$ on full-range speakers, but realise from all the published acoustical data and conventional wisdom, that the laws of physics are absolute. So, in a 17 X 23 X 15ft ceilinged room, when I have to place the speakers no more than 12" from the front (short) wall, 2 ft from the side walls (for WAF and furniture and structural reasons - dont ask,) am I blowing my money? The source, preamp, amps are all superb - but what do I do about finding speakers to match? Sure, I could buy a superb $19K SP Tech Revelation or Zu Definition or Coincident Total Reference, but what about the sound-staging and imaging? Surely I'm not the only person with this dilemma, yet there are so few posts on A'gon regarding this issue, that I wonder whether the problem is exaggerated in my mind or is it just that most A'goners are smarter than I and designed their wives' furniture choices better?:) Room treatments dont help much, or do they? Is there any solution, other than moving the whole sytem to a wifeless room? Please dont ask why these space restrictions apply - believe me, they do, and the interior decorating details are not relevant here.
System: EMM CDSD, DCC2, Sota Cosmos IV, Ear 324 Phono Preamp, Atma-Sphere MP-1, Atma-Sphere MA 2.2, PAD Dominus S/C, etc.
springbok10

Showing 2 responses by drew_eckhardt

drew_eckhardt
394 posts
 
>Should distance of speaker from wall behind be measured as distance from back of speakers (more relevant for rear ported designs??) or front of speakers (for front ported or sealed designs??)?

The front.

An 11' long 100Hz wave coming from a conventional speaker is omni-directional and going to bounce off the front wall regardless of the direction you have it pointed in. Even the lower midrange is getting sprayed all over it.

Your goal is to move those reflections out in time (sound travels about 13 inches per second, 10ms or 11' would be ideal) and/or cut their amplitude (10dB would be ideal) with space to the front wall (and any other hard surfaces) doing both (sound intensity drops with the square of distance; so if you have 8' between you and a speaker, and 4' between it and the front wall, the reflected sound travels twice as far as the direct sound making it 6dB quieter).

This lets your brain perceive the sound as "ambiance" instead of "direct sound," so you're not picking up frequency response perturbations from the reflections or interpreting them as imaging cues.
drew_eckhardt
394 posts
 
You want wave guides/horns, light weight speakers you can move into the room for serious listening (this generally conflicts with the need to be stiff; I like the fifteen pound Linkwitz Plutos which avoid the problem with cylindrical (sewer pipe) enclosures), or on/in-wall designs that would let you get more spacing to the side walls and be designed to the bass boost they'll get.

You can't change physics.
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