Speakers for extremely close listening

Your thoughts on the Kef co-axial design was good thinking. Here are some other design attributes that i would look for in speakers given your intended use:

1) Spacing of drivers should be located very close together i.e. minimal space between them. The farther that the drivers are spaced apart, the more likely that comb filtering will take. Sitting so close to the speakers would make this more evident. You would hear the sound eminate from each driver rather than as a point souce. As such, a widely spaced design wouldn't have time to "blend together" as it would sitting further away from the speaker, producing a less cohesive presentation.

2) Look for a speaker that has smooth bass response with minimal peaking at resonance(s). Due to being both nearfield and factoring in room gain due to close wall proximity AND being in a corner, non-linear bass output would become overpowering rather quickly. Then again, one can somewhat fine-tune "peaky" output in the bass by altering the amount and density of sound damping material in the cabinet.

3) A speaker with limited vertical dispersion may come in handy. This will reduce the tendency for the sound to reflect off of your desk. If you go with such a design ( vertical MTM aka mid-tweeter-mid or "D'Appolito" ), tweeter / ear height becomes more critical.

This approach allows you to use two smaller drivers for better upper midrange response while providing lower mass for quicker transient response. Surface area is not hurt either as you have two drivers sharing the load rather than one larger driver. On top of that, efficiency can be increased by using multiple drivers, power handling can be increased by sharing the load and the amp, if properly designed, should provide measurably more power output into the lower impedance of the multiple drivers.

The wider horizontal dispersion of this type of a design shouldn't provide too much of a problem as the books located on each side of them will act as natural diffusers, especially if you stagger the depths of their bindings here and there.

4) While it would be a matter of personal preference, i would look for something with a soft dome tweeter. The thought of sitting on top of speakers with metal dome's blaring directly in my face already has my ears bleeding...

Hope this helps... Sean
>

I'm using some KEF HT-2001 alumi-pod speakers driven by
an Almarro A205A 5-watt integrated amp.
Source is a Philips DVD-963SA.
This is working extremely well for listening at the computer.
Drop a note if you want to see a picture.
Ken

Audio Physic Spark

I would suggest getting speakers that are often used for "nearfield" listening. I'm talking about recording studio monitors. I've been in several recording studios with great sounding monitors and I noticed what they had in common. They were using a speaker called the Mackie HR824. It is a bookshelf sized speaker (with soft dome tweeters) and they sound great up
close -- or -- if you spread them out, they will throw a wide deep soundstage. They are "active" speakers, they are bi-amped and I think that's one of the reasons they achieve such amazing sound. The amps are tuned
especially for the speakers, with a more powerful amp for the bottom end, which helps give them a lot of low extension for such a small speaker.
If you buy a CD player with a volume control, you could plug straight into the Mackies -- they will take balanced interconnects, single ended, or speaker wire. Another thing you could do is use your computer as a transport, get a
sound card that would take a digital feed from your computer, convert it to
analogue and feed it to your Mackie Speakers. You can download your CD's
to your hard drive uncompressed and they will sound great. So, instead of a
CD player, you put your money into a high quality sound card -- and you also
have a computer. My next suggestion would be -- get a 17" Apple i-book and then you have a home entertainment center with a 17" widescreen monitor, DVD player, digital music transport, internet, games, speakers -- plus -- an extremely powerful portable computer. Now, for your bookshelves, I recommend hardwood with fine grain....

Might I suggest a "supprise entry"? The Little Infinity TSS750 mini shows some superb promise with the right gear!!!
They are very detailed, uncolored, dynamic(yes!), and great immagers! I think these would be wonderful with tube gear especially! A little tube integrated should sound way good on em. They also sound good with warmer SS gear.
The deal with these is that they are bass limited to upper only. They play down to like 125hz, and you need a sub! They are only $99 or less each retail, are well well built(aluminum case), solid, and great looking...not to mention compact(3 to 4" driver with 3/4" tweeter).
One trick with these is you might consider putting a bit more insulation inside them to warm up the midrange pressence a bit. Otherwise, superb!
For cheep, you can pick up two of these at Circuit city and similar...VERY WORTH A TRY!
Not that I go by this, but HT magazine rated this system(4 of these plus center and matching sub) like 95/100 or so! Anyway, worth a listen/try for your application. Like I said, you can tinker with the gear for best results. But I think you might like what you hear...