I have a pair and haven't had this problem, I used them as my main speaker when I had an apartment in DC a few years ago and my wife currently uses them sitting on top of a chest of drawers in her craft room, not ideal but still sounds good. I had them fairly close to a back wall driven by Meridian 605s in a moderate sized room and they sounded quite good.
Question - speaker placement - B & W 805
I am curious to how others place these speakers. I have read countless articles on speaker placement and everytime I try the standard nearfield formula, I get less than ideal performance. For me, the only way these speakers sound right to me is to have them about 7 feet out from the rear wall and I have to listen to them extremely close, almost even with them, about 4 or 5 feet away from them. Any further away and the room gets too involved with the sound. It seems like they are very finicky or I am very finicky and unless the room is perfect acoustically, they need to be very close to the listener. Has anyone else experienced this with speaker placement. I love the sound of them but I wish they would allow closer placement to the rear wall so I could experience a little more weight. I get too much glare and the instruments sound too close together when place near the rear wall.