Speaker on Glass Desk - rear edge vs front edge - impact on 'smearing'?

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Ultralight

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Greetings,

I have a smallish room of about 12 x 13. On the short end (12') of the room, I am planning to put a 8 feet glass desk that is 24 inches wide and 1 feet away from the wall - so the front edge of the desk is 36 inches form the wall.  I use a 50" LCD screen as a monitor sitting on the EDGE of the desk near the wall - so it is about 12" from the wall.  Yes, lots of reflection and not ideal for audio set up - I know...:)

Questions:

1. I assume that if I leave speakers at the rear edge of the table along the wall, the desk will reflect the sound waves and smear the sound badly.  Am I correct?

2. However, if I put the speaker on the front edge of the desk towards the listener so that the speaker woofer and tweeter is on the front edge of the table - or even slightly beyond the desks, would the audio be substantially cleaner as the tweeter and woofer audio projected forward would not be reflected off the glass desk?

Or is individual speaker stands still going to be a whole lot better than option 2?

The 8 feet long desk would be very ideal for this room's setup in part because they are electronically adjustable for height so when I am working and changing from sitting to standing position, the desk, monitor and speakers can all be raised to suit the working position.

Thanks in advance for any advice.  Thanks!

mresseguie

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Howdy, stranger.

Will the speakers be placed directly onto the glass surface, or will they rest of some sort of stands? If the speakers are supported and are slightly tilted upward, much of the feared smearing dissipates in my experience.

I ask because I bought a pair of Isoacoustics stands a few months ago and really liked how my bass improved. Once I get back to a permanent living situation, I plan to use them under my Adelphos speakers in a home office - possibly on a desktop.

Michael


JLM

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1.)  Yes, the glass top would produce the 'comb' effect (sound bouncing off of it to smear, out of phase, with the direct sound) plus as Michael mentioned the relatively large surface would reduce the open space around the speakers thus unduly bloating the bass.

2.)  Yes, but as Michael points out, without some form of isolation, the glass top will resonate (like the sound of wine glasses clinking together).  The well respected Iso-stands were included with my speakers but have only used them on floor stands, so haven't even pulled them out of the boxes.

dB Cooper

What about wall mounting the speakers?

*Scotty*

It's fine to consider potential problems beforehand, but the first thing I would do is put the speakers on the desk and see what kind of problems are audible, and then look at ways to ameliorate them. I wouldn't spend a dime ahead of time on some kind fix before I heard the problem first hand.
There is an old aphorism “Don't borrow trouble from tomorrow".
Scotty

Hipper

I agree with Scotty. Experiment.

You haven't told us where you will be sitting.

After room size, the sound you get from any speakers depends on a number of factors:

Speaker position

Listening position

Speaker behaviour - how the sound fans out after coming out of the drivers

Moving speakers and listening position can make major changes to the sound, particularly bass but also the higher frequencies - because of reflections - and imaging. Whether you get reflections depends on the speaker behaviour.

Ultralight

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Thanks everyone!

mresseguie, Hi to you too.  And JLM - like mresseguie, I do plan to get iscoacoustic stands though my speaker has absolutely zero detectable vibration other than the drivers. The body is so solid that a glass with water in it on the speaker  has no ripples.

Thanks again for all the comments.