Speaker Advice?

Audio Note E series has a back port but is designed to be placed in the corner

You are tossing a great speaker, but I understand. Don't know your budget, but the Harbeth HL5 with front port may be considered. Or, Merlin monitors with no port. The Merlin floor standers are also front ported.

The problem isn't port location, as demonstrated by the Audio Notes that Philjolet referred to. Rather, the problem is that most speakers are not tuned (or capable of being tuned) for placement in a corner.

But it sounds like only one of your speakers will be in the corner, presumably the other will be on one of the same walls but rather far from the other corner. So the ideal might even be different tunings for each speaker!

I have a customer who has one speaker in a corner, and the other is next to an entryway that opens into a spacious foyer. His speakers have user-adjustable port tuning, and he has them each tuned for their respective locations. It's an unorthodox but effective solution to an unorthodox situation. Remember, south of 100 Hz or so, you cannot perceptually separate the woofer from the room because the room's effects are indelibly stamped in the woofer's output by the time you hear it. So in the bass region, consider speaker + room to be an inseparable system, wherein the goal is synergy. Again, the Audio Note approach is a beautiful example.

Your room size in and of itself presents other challenges, which imo call for particular attention to the radiation pattern because the reverberant field (made up primarily of off-axis energy) will dominate the perceived tonal balance at most listening locations within the room (nearfield being the only exception).

You might look at PiSpeakers, they are not well known but are extremely well engineered, and will work well in large rooms and with unorthodox speaker placement constraints. Ask designer Wayne Parham which model he'd recommend for your situation. Wayne was one of my teachers and his work is superb. He takes boundary reinforcement into account, and he takes the reverberant field into account. You can think of PiSpeakers as a high-end alternative to Klipsch, without having an uber high-end price tag.

Best of luck in your quest.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

So are you saying you will have to "tuck" them in this position when not in use, or they will have to remain suchly?

Shakey

When the heck are audiophiles - predominantly me - gonna start exerting some HAF? I'd tell her this is my 2nd greatest love, after her, and "I'm keeping the speakers I have and their positioning - deal with it..."

-RW-