Audio Note AZ-One Speaker - Manual (Page 3)

the side walls, this positioning has been chosen because being a horn it improves
bass response and low frequency cut off for reasons already discussed.
It is vitally important to understand that the proximity of the AZ-One to the rear
wall or corner, if you experience problems with the bass, try moving the speaker
closer to the wall, or try to change the angle of the speaker.
The best performance is achieved by corner placement and if placed in a corner,
the AZ-One should be angled so that the on-axis line of the drive units crosses
about 1 - 2 meters in front of you, with the back corner of each speaker almost
touching the side wall (see diagram 1). Even in a hotel room it is possible to
reduce the boom and bass resonance to a more than acceptable minimum, whilst
still retaining good attack and depth of bass.
If only a rear wall is available, it is still possible to get a fine boom-free bass
response, and experimenting with the angle and distance to the rear wall is
absolutely necessary inorder to get a good result. The inside rear corner of the
speaker can be very close to the wall, as little as 5 centimeters is acceptable, with
the speakers placed as far apart as the room allows, (see diagram 2.).
With only a wall behind the speakers the bass output will roll off quicker than in
the corner position, as the acoustic amplification provided by the room boundary
(the wall) is less than half of that of the corner.
GENERAL.
As with most Audio Note™ product concepts, this design philosophy is in stark
contrast to conventional speaker design dogma which creates speakers that as a
main placement consideration dictates that the speaker should be as far away
from reflecting walls as possible, a design philosophy which in my opinion is as
illogical as it is unpractical, all rooms have walls, so you might as well design
them into the equation when looking at the time constants between the direct
versus the reflected sound and the rooms main resonans modes which are only
excited more by generating the sound far from the walls, in addition to the fact
that having speakers placed in the middle of the room is physically obtrusive and
does not endear your partner to your music system.
So to briefly sum up the advantages of placing the speakers near the room
boundries,
A.) Improves room compatibility (variation in sound from room to room) by
minimising the speaker's sonic variability to different rooms, being close to the
room boundaries gives a far more predictable relationship between direct and