I am looking for a smallish bookshelf or tower that I can place either on a shelf holding my equipment or besides them CLOSE to the wall. I will be using a subwoofer for lower frequencies, but like it to go down below 60 easily. It would be for my 2-ch audio duties, AND to be R/L channel of my HT, as I live in a condo and don’t have a separate room. Hence, a matching center is also needed.
From what I know, such speaker shouldn’t have any port on the back, have stiff chasis, and if bookshelf somehow designed to be placed on a shelf, or some isolating legs not to bounce off the shelf as much. Any suggestions?
Alternatively, what are thoughts of BUILT-IN speakers? So, I can build it into cabinet or the wall? Would any high end wall speaker achieve good sound in that fashion?
Last point, MORE manufacturers MUST address this requirement, LITERALLY THE NUMBER ONE reason ppl go for soundbars and crap sounding Sonos and the like is that the typical bookshelfs are NOT meant to be put on a bookshelf!
Budget is around $5K, but if there’s a perfect solution, might be willing to shell out a bit more.
PS. My new HT pre-amp WILL have Dirac Live, so it could do some room correction to help, but you can cure issues of sound bouncing off the wall.
Problem is Kii Three doesn’t work well for HT system I am running, I am basically using HT as pre-amp to my 2-ch Classe’ amp for the 2-ch audio, I will also use a better DAC (still researching) to feed the amp for audio only items, I am not sure if I could do that with an active system.
If you can find a used pair they’ll do the job and save you some coin. They are designed to be close to the wall, in a corner or out in the room. Bass is solid down to 40 hz. They are the Gradient Revolutions. Hard to track down but well worth the effort. Reviews are out there by REG of TAS.
Although there is a long build wait, I can recommend both the Decware ERRx and the Decware HR-1 for these purposes; I have used both very close to a wall successfully. Great speakers!
Contact Mads at Buchardt and ask him about buying three speakers instead of two. You can’t be the first person to want to use them across the front. Also the designer is from Dynaudio so they may have an idea of a product from that line that would be a close match.
I have the Amphion floor standing Argon 7Ls. They exceeded my expectations. I bought them half blind as I only could audition the Argon 1.
Before I moved to the other side of the planet I had PSD Imagine T3’s I prefer the Amphion 7ls. One of the reasons I started looking at the Amphion brand is because they are noted for being less prone to placement issues. I’ve found this to be true. The PSD’s took me weeks of fine tuning to get the placement correct. My brother and I both bought a pair. and he is in an asymmetrical room with them 10 inches from the back wall. I have mine pulled out a bit more. around 20 inches. Both setups are great.
There’s a pair on US Audiomart for a good price if you can use white. You can get the center from the 5 series from Audiowaves and several other dealers.
ATC sells their speakers individually, and their smaller SCM7 and SCM11 are sealed, exceedingly stiff cabinets.
I have the 11v2 and they do well close to the wall, better away of course, but that’s acoustics.
Sealed is the best in my opinion close to any boundary surface. Bass will still well up but will be far less of a problem than any ported and probably reflex as either will interact much more than none at all.
If you have room on both sides of the shelf/surface to get a small tower on the floor in the corners, check out Ohm Walsh. I got a pair on Craigslist and they sound great practically against the back and side walls. I have Ohm Walsh 4s, and a pair of REL T5 subs (right in the same corners) at very low crossover and minimal volume that actually toned down what seemed at first to be too much base.
I went this route given that 1) Unless I move, I’m never going to have speakers more than a few feet from the front wall, 2) the left wall is almost entirely glass, with a view that trumps sound treatments.
