Speakers small enough for desktop use

Era Design 5 would likely serve you well at the top of your price range. I did not listen nearfield, but heard them up against a wall. Magnificent qualities for such a small speaker. I was really impressed by them. On a more limited budget I'd agree with the Swan M200 recommendation for a powered speaker, but they won't have the refinements of the Era pushed by good amplification. The amp in one of mine failed, and I have no means of replacement (anyone know of any)? I have not heard them, but M-Audio makes a series of pro monitors that are self-powered that have pretty good real-world reviews online. Those might be worth checking out. The Era would be at the top of my list.

Marco

Zaikesman,
You have a very specific need. All driver's high and low freq output must be integrated by the time it hits your ear. This is not often not found in normal high-end speakers.

For small < $1k near field monitor, I would suggest pro-audio active speakers like Dynaudio BM5A. Very neutral and non-fatiguing sound. Lots of speaker will sound just fine 10ft away but sound extremely fatiquing under 5 ft.

Eric

How about the ERA design 4's?

Alex, I do not own the NHTs but heard them when our local audiophile group visited the NHT factory. They demo'd this model with and without the subwoofer. I felt that I would be happy with them sans woofer, but I can't say that you would feel the same. These are part of their pro line and are designed as near-field monitors, so you can be sure of getting proper driver integration close up. They sounded remarkably "right" to me. The NHT folks are excellent engineers with good discipline, a well-equipped lab, and a lot of integrity, but they are not tweaky audiophiles. Make of that what you will. The company overall has a rock n' roll orientation (righteous amps and guitars in several people's offices).

Macrojack has three pairs of M-00's, perhaps he will chime in.

Interesting situation, Zaikesman.

It sounds as if you're going to do a combination of nearfield and across-the-room listening?

I just got the Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 sat/sub combo and am quite impressed with the naturalness of the sound relative to other computer speaker systems and the strain-free volume at which they play. I run my speakers off a Macintosh Quad-core G5 using iTunes and from the analog outs, and am surprised that I'm able to get nice sound from a cheap [the speakers only] set up like this. The iTunes equalizer allows me to adjust the sound to my liking even more.

You can get the ProMedias at Amazon.com for about $110. Build quality may be an issue with them though, as I had to get a replcement set because one of the channels didn't output sond. The second set suffers from a loose 3mm jack on the back of one of the satellites, but I got it to work.

Before the Klipsch I'd been using a Swan sat/sub combo that just recently crapped out. The Swans didn't have the exagerated treble and bass so many desk top computer speaker systems have, but they also had anemic bass and wouldn't play very loud. I didn't go with the Swan M200s because they're about 13" tall, but I should note that these are the Swans most people speak so highly of.

It's funny that people are talking about NHTs for your set up as I have an extra set of SuperZeros at home and had considered doing exactly the same thing. I've been thinking of bringing my Audio Mirror DAC, Blue Circle BC22 and NHTs to work and run them off the toslink outs of my computer. If I did that I'd probably also bring my 29" tall steel shot filled Lovan stands in and set them up traditionally, not on my desk.

I had also considered using little speakers with a small tube amp too.