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Speakers that sound good in corners or against the walls?

Jodet

pfm Member
I'm moving my 2-channel system to a new room. And I'm pretty tired of speakers that want to be three, four, five feet into the room.

I'm a Harbeth/Spendor/Quad/Proac kinda guy.

Any recommendations for a speaker I might like that is happy closer to walls?
 
Vintage Tannoys, JBLs, Yamaha NS1000 etc are all designed for a back wall (half-space) location. Most 'proper' speakers are to be honest, the middle of the room thing is a modern fad.

Corners (quarter-space) are more troublesome, you'd need to look to Klipsch, vintage Wharfdale, Voigt, Lowther and certain other stuff specifically designed to go there IMO. Corners really aren't as simple as just flicking some switch on some active box either (despite what some will say!). Klipsch etc work there as they are designed from the ground up to do so, e.g. very directional horns and bass loading that takes the room gain and behaviour into account. No dome tweeter or cone mid is ever going to sound any good in a corner, you need something that beams so the sound gets to you well before the reflections. As with most things PWK's papers from the middle of the last century are well worth reading as he understood it in a way most folk just don't these days.
 
Proac have recently launched their Tablette 10

Sealed cabinet (hurrah)

Placement close to backwall

They are high on my wish list for use in medium sized room.
If just they will revise that silly biwire solution

Rega RX range might be another solution allthough far from Spendor/Harbeth presentation, most of these Spen/Harbs..have fine mids but too polite for my taste and no real tunefull bas either
 
Check out Larsen 4, 6 & 8's. All are designed to work up against the front wall, and are better kept more than a foot away from corners.
 
Check out Larsen 4, 6 & 8's. All are designed to work up against the front wall, and are better kept more than a foot away from corners.

Reminds me of the good old Carlsson OA design in which Larsen has derived
The original OA50 or 52 was seriously good

Another Swedish speaker working close to wall are the Guru range, no idea if they have solved their distribution issues

Neat Iota works quite close to backwall, maybe not a solution unless smaller room maybe added a sub
Never heard the Alpha
 
Jodet

Speakers standing out from the wall is the best way to get your wife / partner to become pissed off with HiFi. It just looks plain stupid and nerdy.

I have a pair of SBLs up against the wall in the dining room and they sound excellent. Also you can now pick them up for peanuts. The same applies to NBLs. If you are really serious, try a pair of DBLs.

Another good set of wall hugging speakers that sound great are Linn Isobariks and Saras. I ran a pair of briks for years and they just filled the room with music and the bass was phenomenal.

Recently I bought a pair of Shahinian Arcs which are up against the wall in the lounge when not in use and are pulled 3 ft out for serious listening. They are also very good.

These are all good bits of kit and anyone of them is in the top 1% of speakers. Your world awaits you.

Regards

Mick
 
I'm moving my 2-channel system to a new room. And I'm pretty tired of speakers that want to be three, four, five feet into the room.

I'm a Harbeth/Spendor/Quad/Proac kinda guy.

Any recommendations for a speaker I might like that is happy closer to walls?

Pretty much anything that isn't rear ported should be ok up against the wall.

The exception of course is Snell / Audio Note which are rear ported but recommended to be right in the corners. I didn't find that to be true and preferred my AN-e and AN-j to be about 3ft from rear and side walls as I'm not a fan of booming bass (have never found a ported speaker that doesn't suffer from bloated or booming bass /chuffing port)

The Snell K's aren't as fussy being sealed boxes.
 
Some very good recommendations above. I would also second the Larsen line, I have owned my pair of Model 4's for almost five years now, they have been wonderful. I would say the new models are more akin to the Carlsson OA-58, they share Carlsson's design goals either way.

They are probably one of the least fussy speaker I have owned with regard to placement, amplifiers etc. Get the spread right between the pair, and off you go.

Shahinian another potential good choice as well.
 
Shahinians don't like being up against a wall as they have a rear passive radiator (excluding the compass and elves)
 
If you can find a pair and they would be cheap - a pair of Monitor Audio R852MDs are closed back speakers that work well close to the wall.
 
My philosophy when it comes to buying the right stuff is "ask the right questions to find the answers you need". While speakers sounding good in corners/close to walls are a good question in this regard, it's only part of the equation.

This particular question was one of the main reasons I bought Kii Three - those are specifically designed to work in that kind of environment - but it wasn't the only question. I can recommend Kii based on this criteria, but I can also recommend other active speakers with individual boundary adjustments, passive speakers combined with a parametric eq software or room correction, speakers with that included - like Genelec - or speakers like Klipsch horns designed for corners.
There's just not enough questions asked to give any meaningful recommendation.

- Room size?
- Volume needs?
- Size restrictions?
- Design restrictions?
- Particular sound desires?
- Prize?

If you focus on asking the right questions for your needs, the answers will keep narrowing down.
 
If you need something that works very well in a corner and size and price are a consideration look at "Cornered Audio" . We use these when we are doing commercial jobs and background music for shops and bars . They make two ranges one for home and one for proper commercial work . Things like the C4 and C5 are fantastic, sound very much like a high quality book shelf speaker .
 


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