Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Placement of M3's

The port does add a complication, just not a very big one on a small speaker.

On a big floorstanding speaker there seems to be more complication, I imagine partly becase the back ports are a couple of feet from the front port and woofer. The M3s just aren't that big.

I did find with M2s that positioning the front of the speaker behind the "shelf" (in my case behind the top of larger speakers the M2s were sitting on) did make a huge difference, ie a very "boxy" sound.

I picked an M2 off the stand and "swung it back and forth" getting closer to the wall. There is a slight difference in the bass starting maybe 6-8" from the wall. I don't think this is related to the port, just normal "room acoustics affecting the bass" stuff.

Keeping the front of the speaker "sticking out" from the shelf (or at least not behind the front edge of the shelf) is the main thing you want to worry about. Sounds like you have a pretty good situation here because the cabinet sticks out further than the shelf above it (do I have that right ?).

What is the distance from the front of the cabinet to the back wall ? I imagine if you had "no space" behind the speaker you could probably just pull the cabinet out from the wall a couple of inches and nobody would notice...