Speakers with no rear wall, better or worse sound?

The 'body' component is I believe the strongest supporting argument for having a rear wall. Of course we have the floor, side walls, and ceiling for some level of body. I was wondering if a good recording is to accurately reproduce a 'live' sound, it should also include the recorded characteristics of the room or recording studio. Mixing in different listening room characteristics adds some coloration (which may be desirable), but it is not accurate reproduction. I do realize that a completely dead room lacking no 'body' can lead to an equally dead or flat sound. One may say "whatever sounds great to you is fine." I would usually agree with this. My point in this thread is that it is impractical to (reversibly) add or subtract walls to find a preferred listening character. Fundamentals of acoustics/physics must play a role in understanding and addressing the limitations of any room that has not been purpose built for listening.

Problem is that 'accurate reproduction' is such a moving target, especially when most recordings are hardly 'accurate reproductions' of a live event in the first place. Most recording efforts to produce accurate recordings come from classical music department but it only works there when well engineered performances are small scale which seems to overcome some of effects of the compression and downsizing of larger orchestral events. So it is a compromise. Even most soundstaging effects having their orgins in the recorded music, as opposed to set up, are artificially recreated by mic placement which often gives undue prominance to some instruments which is something you never hear in concert. But it sounds nice :-).

So, I would also make a case for the thought that 'if it sounds good to you, then it is good' because sounding 'real' is virtually impossible anyway, and faithful reproduction of what is on the disc of the majority of the music you listen to may not really be what you want to hear. The exception to this may be the few really anal audio enthusiasts who really do want a perfect chain, cradle to grave and they listen to principally train wistles and jets taking off. :-)

There's no right or wrong, hard and fast answer. Try the speakers in the different positions and see which you prefer.

So I guess another angle on the original question would be: if you could change your room dimensions or characteristics to improve the sound, what would you do...no rear wall or putting in a rear wall.

I'd think that there will likely be (at least) 2 audible effects:

Overall bass response will likely be attenuated as room re-inforcement from the "front" wall is eliminated.

Bass response should be smoother as frequency specific destructive interference from reflections off that wall are eliminated. (There will still be some destructive effects from the other walls, floor, and ceiling, but that wall is often the worst offender.)

As to the "better or worse" analysis of the net impact, that will be case specific and will turn, in part, on whether there'd be too much or too little bass from that speaker in that room, with the missing wall "restored".

Good luck.

Marty