KEF LS 50


I don't have room for stands so I would like to hear from you how much would I loose having the LS 50s placed in a long wooden low cupboard (the speakers will be at ear level at about 40cm from the back wall. One of them will be closer to the right wall (at about 40cm) and the other will be much farther from left wall (about 3 meters). The speakers will be about 3 meters from one another. Does this placement make sense? Is it worth purchasing these speakers for such a set up, or are there other speakers that have a less critical placement.
tvfreak
I just purchased a used LS50 with now about 100+ hours on it. I have it on my home office placed on top of my desk. My desk has one 26" monitor and the 2 speakers on each side of the monitor. My speakers are 25 cm from the back wall, 15 cm from the sides, and 80 cm from each other. It gets even worse, my desk is, which is 57" wide, 29" deep, 29" high (though adjustable), is stuffed in a perfectly fitting alcove. I also have 2 additional monitors on a monitor arm that I have on the side protruding out from my desk and above the height of the speakers. I sit back 1 meter from the speakers leaning back with my legs stretched out (the most ergonomic way to sit). I have a monitor tray to help with this.

You would think that the sound would be compressed and sound pretty bad. In fact it is quite amazing. I had the AudioEngine A2's before these LS50's and the enjoyment from the new speakers is exponentially higher. So much so that I recently purchased about $300 of hi-res music from hdtracks just to listen on these speakers. The imaging is very good, the sound seems to escape out of the alcove fairly well.

I work 2 jobs one at an office and another at home. I was getting burnt out and missing my music (on my main rig) but these new speakers have made me enjoy doing my second job so much. In fact I will be starting another home job soon and these speakers have given me tremendous injection of enthusiasm to sit in front of my desk and work.

My sound would improve if I had more space (in 1+ years that will happen) for the speakers to breath. I can only imagine how much more incredible these speakers would sound. I am going to go and listen to the KEF blades soon because since these mini's are so well done the Blades must be something else.
I think I read somewhere that the ls50s are based on older nearfield monitor designs and that some of teh best listening results have been reported from those listening in a more near field type setup. My experience with the ls50s was pretty consistent with this.

I got to hear another agoner's ls50s on my system in both a larger and smaller room in my house. They were underwhelming in the large room, which would have been a tall challenge given their size, but did very well in the smaller room in all regards. Did not get to listen nearfield, but I suspect that would have been quite ideal,especially given their point source like concentric driver design.