What kind of active speakers?

Bob, I actually have presumed - from reading some articles, somewhere - that near field monitors were designed specifically for a "close monitoring" setup, exclusively

That is true - some are definitely designed and voiced this way. They will not work at farfield distances.

Basically, the only speaker that will work at all and any distance (with no worries about toe-in etc.) is one with a wide even 80% dispersion across most of the frequency range (say up to roughly 10 Khz). Any speaker that has a narrow dispersion will only work at a specific suitable distance or at a range of distances that can be achieved by adjusting tilt, toe-in and listening spot for a particular room.

This is simply due to physics, here is an analogy:

1) A narrow dispersion design is like a flashlight with a narrow beam. Stand too close and point it straight at the eyes and it may be too bright. And slight changes of a few inches will almost always completely change the light reaching you and what surfaces in the room are "lit up" (the reflected light in the room). Listener position with respect to the flashlight matters a lot in terms of what is seen. Point the flashlight at a book and you have a great reading light and can see very clearly just the book.

2) A wide dispersion design is like an ordinary incandescent light bulb with no focus. It just lights up the whole room evenly. It is much less sensistive to placement or distance. Given a sufficently powered bulb the whole room can be lit fairly evenly...but it needs a lot more power to do its job and while the room is lit evenly it may not be as bright as one might like in a particular spot.

What we hear (like what we see) is a combination of direct and reflected energy (and this ratio changes as you go further from the source). Only a speaker with an even power response (wide even dispersion) will sound the same over a broad range of locations in a room.

Since the work by Dr Floyd Toole in the late 70's and early 80's, many modern nearfields have moved towards wide even dispersion and are extremely flexible. However, even among "wide dispersion" designs there is a significant degree of variability (as there is with consumer designs too).

Yeh I too thought that near field speakers were designed for dispersing sound in some narrow listening window, er other. Yes, I don't know the whole story either.
Have also read some about regular home audio speakers having to be listened to at like 6 feet back, minim requirement to sound right.
Would like to know myself how that works really.
If anyone finds some links on more indepth near field design, that would be nice if you could pass it up to us.

Bob,

Dr. Floyd Toole is an executive at Harmon (JBL) - I believe your speakers are designed using Toole's approach - wide even dispersion with useable signal up to 80 degrees. Most all nearfields are designed this way - and many have a waveguide so that tweeter matches the woofer in dispersion at the crossover. I'd bet your speakers are probably peerfectly flat up to at least 30 degress off axis.