Planar close to a rear wall? Quad for example?

You might want to consider Gradient Revolutions. They are designed to work very well when placed close to the rear wall. More than one reviewer has likened their sound to Quads. They do, however, require large amounts of high current power.

I heartily endorse Onhwy61's recommendation. I've only heard the Revolutions at shows (CES several times), but in every instance, the Gradient sounded terrific in small rooms and backed up to the wall. It is specifically designed to accomodate difficult placement and is very flexible in the way it can be configured. A good looking, good sounding, and easy to place speaker. Downside? It is not terribly efficient, but then again, if it is placed in smaller rooms, a lot of power will not be needed.

a number of years ago, i visited a technician who repairs quads. as i walked into his house, i noticed a pair of quads
set up in his kitchgen. the speakers were very close to the wall, probably, no more than 1 foot.

while there was a loss of depth, the naturalness of timbre was evident.
a poorly set up pair of quad 57 is preferable, to my ears, to any cone design.

hi duke: why don't you design a pair of electrostatic speakers to compete with the sound labs you sell ?

MrTennis,

Come to think of it, the original Quads have a felt pad that absorbs the tweeter's backwave. Hmmm... I hadn't taken that into consideration, but that would probably give them them a much better chance of working close to the wall than other dipoles.

As for designing an electrostat to compete against the SoundLabs, well thanks for the vote of confidence but that's out of my league!

Duke

FWIW, re backwave, in my initial frustration setting up Quad 63's I put heavy felt on the back of the speakers. As far as I was concerned all of the supposed benefits of using dipoles disappeared with the 'unmanagable' backwave.

The speakers didn't begin to sound good (open up and sound clear) until I got them out 4 1/2 ft from the wall behind them and using diffusing materiels was still very beneficial. In my experience the down side of the close placement to the wall wasn't just the loss of depth that was the problem so much as loss of clarity. But then I like to sit about dead center in an orchestral hall usually in rows D E or F where clarity is very evident.

Interesting how we all value the same things so differently.