Speakers good for close to wall placement


There are quite a few speakers I would like to purchase, but I need to be realistic. I will need to find some speakers that perform well when placed close to the rear wall. After that choice I can move on to selecting the proper integrated amp to drive them. Any suggestions on which speakers work well near the rear wall?
cincyhound

Showing 1 response by dht4me

The whole speakers close to the wall issue is GREATLY misunderstood and fraught with a ton of misinformation. 
  You need to consider what is going on to understand the situation as a whole. 
1) When you place a speaker close to any room boundary you reinforce bass response AND excite room nodes. This is a major reason why people like small speakers in tight spaces close to walls. This is easily fixed with bass traps  but many will never spend the money and never get true full potential from their setup.

2) Walls create reflections and even the back of a speaker cabinet radiates sound, sound that is not necessarily pleasing. Don't believe me, get behind a speaker box and put your ear near the cabinet. It's not pretty and early reflections of this sort are not pretty. Solution is to put absorbers directly behind speakers or better yet a QRD diffusor.  

The speaker and room should be considered as a unit and integration is paramount. I have 3 VERY large speaker systems that traditional misinformation says they only sound good several feet away from the walls however I can place the fronts 3 feet from the rear wall with no issues being that I have my rear wall done in Skyline QRD's and proper bass traps tuned for a low RT60. 

The popularity of small speakers with tiny woofers is undoubtedly due to the reluctance to properly treat a room's nodes for full range capable speakers and smaller speakers have less surface to radiate objectionable rear waves. 

The only speakers that really need to be spaced a but from rear walls are electrostats which have membrane issues when too close to a boundary wall. 

I remember being shocked by the Snell speakers that were designed to go flat against a rear wall and taking the rear early reflection completely out of the equation however the spaced approach with a diffusor gives a soundstage of epic scale and more enjoyable experience.

So treat you room first and then worry less about speaker selection.