Near-field desktop speakers against a wall

[Cavander]

So after much more research, I've landed on going with a proven design for my desktop speakers. The problem is, I'm trying to land on which design would be the best for going either on my desktop or mounted on the wall, but either way they need to be able to sound well against a wall, or at least with a minimal gap between rear of speaker and the wall.

The short list of kits I'm thinking are:

Jeff Bagby's Continuum II (These seem to be the most recommended for this application)
Jim Holtz's Statement Monitors (I really like the idea of these and might actually rearrange my desk so it's not against the wall for these...)

Other ideas I like:
Jeff Bagby's Sopranos
Paul Carmody's Speedsters (These were what really got me looking into DIY, so I might still just build them)

How do people think these would stack up as desktop monitors?
(I posted over at tech-talk on PartsExpress forums too, so if you read this there, don't mind me...)

 

[kenderes]

I am far from being an expert on desktop speakers, but my experience of equalizing a pair of Edifier R2730 on my desk(s) leads me to conclude that it barely matters exactly which speakers you use. Reflections from the desk, walls and other surfaces will mangle any frequency response about below 1000Hz.

The best you could hope for is using DSP equalizer to correct the tonal balance, and those corrections would depend on your exact listening position. Without equalizing, any speaker would sound really 'wrong'.

 

[picowallspeaker]

my experience of equalizing a pair of Edifier R2730

I really wonder what's inside those Edifier R2730
You don't really need to touch anything on a well done 3 way- I guess they made them on the cheap - Usually touching the balance of speaker brings to awful things, but one thing you catch right: it can be the perfect speaker but in the wrong position it won't sound right.

 

[kenderes]

I really wonder what's inside those Edifier R2730. You don't really need to touch anything on a well done 3 way- I guess they made them on the cheap

Those are relatively cheap Chinese speakers with no-name drivers. They are not that shabbily made though - the walls are pretty thick, they have a DSP crossover and multiway amps. As far as I understand, they are sort of a collaboration between engineers in Ukrainian office of Edifier who provided the design and Chinese facturies of Edifier. If you are interested, there are measurements on their Russian/Ukrainian site, but the speakers themselves are mostly sold in China and ex-USSR countries.

I'd say they are NOT studio monitors and can't play very loud without going into heavy distortion. They also have a lot of diffraction in high frequencies not shown on measurements above - I need to try filling the space between the grill and the baffle with a felt cutout perhaps. But by far their worst problem when placed on a desk are reflections and all kinds of boundary interference from desk, monitor, wall, ceiling and other surfaces. And if you change how you sit - the frequencies of peaks and nulls shift too. It's not a surprising result at all, if you use a calculator of reflections and consider the desk your 'floor', you can see that any speaker placed on a table will have a lot of problems. So that's my point - even if you take an ideal bookshelf speaker, on a desk it will need DSP to not sound off.

 

[LineSource]

+1 Sopranos for their excellent drivers. You can butt the tweeter and midrange together to create enough room for a front bottom port. A normal round pipe port is easier to tune than a slot port. Another option is to put the port on the outer side panel if nothing on the desk blocks it.

I have also seen taller desktop cabinets which put the tweeter at seated ear level. This allows greater internal volume for a lower frequency bass port tuning. A tall cabinet placed behind, or partially behind the monitor can allow a larger 6" -F3 ~40Hz midwoofer mounted above an ear-level tweeter(MT vs. TM).