Planar close to a rear wall? Quad for example?

Magnepan MC-1's are made to mount on the wall. I am running a pair on a wall that frames a picture window in front of my desk. I have the speakers about 5 feet apart and 4 feet from my listening position. Sandwiched between the speakers and the wall are acoustical panels (BAD) that are 18 inches by 48 inches high. I am supplementing the base with a quad sub. The tonal quality is very good but I struggle with imaging being so close to the speaker. Voices are good, but instruments tend to be smeared to the sides. It is not ideal but I cannot think of anything better given that I want to sit so close to the window/wall for the view while I work. I tried a pair of Gallo Due bookshelf speakers and they were waaay to "hot" sitting that close. The MC-1's are not too agressive at all, I just miss the imaging and depth.

Thanks for this Quad discussion and to Drken for starting it off. I was very favorably impressed by the musicality and dynamics (surprised is more accurate) of the new 2905 demo at the CES. A local dealer is adding the Quad line and I look forward to a more complete audition of both the 2805 and 2905 once he is set up.

The five feet minimum spacing from the front wall makes sense given the recommendation for at least a 10 ms delay between direct and first reflected sound arrival (I'm discounting floor bounce since we hear that anyway with speech or live music).

Mrtennis continues talking about his experiences with the 57, a different speaker from all later Quads because of radiation patterns and the heavy felt backing. I wouldn't question that he was impressed by a near-wall placement, but that is not relevant to the "new Quads" that Drken is asking about.

Overall, this is educational and fun reading.

If you can completely absorb the backwave, it would probably work. Unfortunately I don't think that's realistically possible. The problem is, the two-foot round-trip path length difference (imparting a 2-millisecond delay) before the backwave energy arrives at the listening position puts it right smack in the time zone where the ear is most sensitive to coloration and loss of clarity from reflections. On the other hand, 10 milliseconds of time delay (corresponding to Sogood51's five-feet-out dipole speaker positioning) is long enough that the reflections will add richness and liveliness with minimal detriment.

Another great post from Duke. There ought to be an audiogon "stickies" for great advice such as this. This is the same issue as side wall reflections or the nearby coffee table right in front of the speaker...nearby reflections cause a collapse in soundstage. Above 5 Msecs things start to improve significantly and at 10 millisecs you are in the "safe" zone for reflections.

The reverse applies too....don't sit within 5 feet of a wall if you can help it!

How close can you sit to the Quads?