true bookshelf speaker

>Or is it a matter of compromise or increasing the WAF by having speakers on a stand imposing in the room?

If you're looking for WAF, Triad sells in-wall versions of most of their speakers. Everything they do is made to order and they can provide grills that match your decor/wall color.

Wilson Duet speaker is a true bookshelf speaker.

I have an ad running now for Soliloquy Sat-5's. No ports and really solid, heavy boxes make them great for bookshelves. If you ever decide to put them on stands, they image nicely and look great too.

You need sonic hollography.
Find a good tube amp and invest in top notch 5751s as inputs and 6SN7 Jan CHS 6SN7W metal base tubes. The speaker will try to sound flat but the amp will break their will with magnificant tubes. You can get real chrome domes if the aforementioned Ws are out of reach. You can buy OEM labled Chrome domes they are close but not as good as the "W" s etc, but are a true chrome dome 6SN7GT which 'out images' the rest.
The other option is to tell your sweetest that she won't die if good speakers are present. Some of the people she wants to impress may well find themselves admiring them.
I picked 4 1940s yes 40s 6SN7gts for $5 a pop labeled motorola etc. two matching pairs. I also snarfed 1948 GTs with a world record of chrome flashing both Sylvania marked 1948 for 21 bucks a pair.
5751s you have to get by chance from a friend or dependable dealer. I have a number but not a ton for spares, good ones asre precious. Try your luck on ebay although they are too much money some are fairly priced OK variants that give you the idea. The JAN tubes circa 1975 from Sylvania not the most halographic tube that some of the vaunted tubes are. I know I have both.
On a different stroke the 50s 60s and 70s Heerlen 7136s a 12au7 from Amperex only for special apps are expensive but about as good as a small input tube that exists, never mind the label HP. Beckman etc ordered them for there durability and liniear behavior. They work in audio like nothing else. Your speakers will come to life with decent output tubes not the cheapest you can find.
There is acompany that was selling the ultimate monitor a year or two aga If they exist and oprices are normal not stupid sill then they sounded like a choice.
I have two powered pairs I never use. One is tubed.

>You need sonic hollography.Find a good tube amp

That's the opposite of what you want to be doing. A speaker with baffle step compensation for placement away from room boundaries is going to have 3-6dB more output at its woofer and port resonances when stuffed into a book shelf.

A tube amp with non-negligible output impedance (especially a single ended triode) is only going to make it worse since it boosts output at the speaker resonances.

>The other option is to tell your sweetest that she won't die if good speakers are present. Some of the people she wants to impress may well find themselves admiring them.

Or you can get your sweetest to park her cute little butt in your favorite chair in front of a reasonable setup where she's pleasantly surprised at how into the music she can get without having had anything to drink.

Apart from the spousal issues this is basic physics and arithmetic. Wave lengths larger than the speaker dimensions are going to wrap around it and bounce off the front wall. Since they're large compared to that distance the phase shift will be minimal, with the distance small compared to the listening distance the reflections will arrive at approximately the same amplitude, and you'll have nearly 6dB of boost at lower frequencies.

Fourfold increases in your bass, mid-bass, and lower mid-range output power work well to sell bad speakers to the unwashed masses but aren't hi-fi.

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