Most people choose small speakers because they have a modest listening space or don’t want the speakers to dominate the room. Given these clear requirements, it is ironic that most compact models are still designed specifically to sound best when placed well away from walls. Some manufacturers even go as far as to call their smaller offerings ‘bookshelf’ designs, but take it from us that the vast majority of these won’t have been optimised to work there.
Why would most speaker companies take such a contradictory design route? From an engineer’s point of view, doing things this way makes the design much easier given that they can (essentially) ignore the effects of the walls and focus on optimising performance. Given that the type of material used in the wall and even the support can make a significant difference to the way a speaker sounds, it is easy to understand why most prefer to avoid the complications. Epos hasn’t shirked the challenge in its new ES-7N standmounters.
