What close wall speakers would you recommend around £8000

How about £800 instead of £8,000? SBLs would be a real cost effective solution. In good condition for between £500 -£1k, or in not so great cosmetic condition for less.

Put your existing speakers in the loft, and bring them back out when your daughter is no longer a threat or threatened.

If she did manage to damage the SBLs somehow, then no huge loss. My SBLs have survived 2 daughters so I can vouch for their suitability. Although to be fair they were never really interested in tugging at wires or pushing the speakers around. On the other hand the occasional boys that came over could have done with a leash and collar,

Still, they are only nippers for a short while, so nothing too drastic required. At that age I also don't recall having huge amounts of time to indulge in main system listening. The little kitchen system got the most play, except when it was dance time, of course.

SBLs will love your amps too.

pete T15 posted:

I've been looking for similar speakers but more likely active , maybe a bit left field but recently I heard Dutch and Dutch 8c Actives and they were very very impressive indeed , in fact they are a complete system with DACs included but they can be used in analogue domain . They are full range and designed to go up to 10cm from the rear wall . Very interesting concept . 

And if you are looking for active the whole Audiovector s3 and sr6 series works with Snaxo. But a digital active set of speakers is tempting at some time in the future. 

Claus  

Thanks Claus but I’m actually looking at  going Active and losing boxes in the process . 

Pete . 

Consciousmess posted:

Wow quite an array of suggestions. The wall to the rear of the speakers is external i.e. not plasterboard and I’ll be honest I didn’t expect as many high end  (they are to me) speakers to be wall based. I thought the space behind them was necessary to give a 3D image.

 

 

It's not so much the imaging as the effect on bass: proximity of a wall boosts bass, and to sound right a speaker needs to have a bass roll-off that matches.

The other effect of the wall is reflections causing additive and subtractive peaks and troughs in response, but that is still the case with back to the wall (they only disappear if the front baffle of the speaker is flush with the wall - in other words built into the wall, or closely surrounded by cupboards and full shelves).

I replaced Thiel CS1.6 with NBLs and actually got a deeper soundstage, albeit with a 282/hi/250 so not exactly holographic in either case, the 552/500 has expanded it somewhat. The Thiels, even the 1.6, are known for their imaging abilities though not for rocking out convincingly and they certainly didn’t when driven by Accuphase but the Naim amps had other ideas. My thiels used to be a couple of feet from the wall, the NBLs are 5.5cm. It’s hard to find any with crossovers these days and only tweeters are still available so a risky choice. If tempted use the basic Naim cables in the first instance, lavender and A5.

Its really very easy, adoption! And then you will tens of thousands you can spend on hifi. LOL ps. Only joking!