The 5 foot from the wall recommendation you see for dipoles and bipoles (like the little Audience speakers) is because reflections arriving within 10 milliseconds of the first-arrival sound tend to be detrimental, and sound travels slightly over one foot per millisecond, so the round trip off the wall behind the speakers adds up to about 10 milliseconds.
Now that 10 millisecond recommendation is not an abrupt wall; rather, it’s within a fuzzy transition zone. Ime that backwave reflection can arguably still be more beneficial than detrimental down to about 6 milliseconds (three feet out from the wall), if you diffuse it and pay attention to your other early reflection paths. To be more specific, you may be able to get away with dipoles if you a) position them about three feet into the room and b) diffuse the backwave (imo absorb it only as a last resort) and c) treat the wall behind the listening position, whether diffusion or absorption would be best I cannot say from here. And toe the speakers in strongly, to minimize the early sidewall reflections, and/or diffuse the early sidewall reflections.
And finally, if this is your mancave, you might try setting the system up either centered along a room diagonal or at least rotated a bit relative to the room walls. This sometimes works better in a small room than a more conventional configuration.
There are other techniques for dealing with the short reflection paths of a small room, but they are more complicated to implement, and since you already have the Maggies imo you might as well give ’em a shot. Even if you plan to change speakers anyway in order to get more liveliness at low level, if you try this with your Maggies and get good results, then you will know that dipoles can work well in your room. If you can’t get your Maggies to sound good in there, then chances are other dipoles aren’t going to fare any better, and you can modify your search accordingly.
Duke
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