The first obstacle with most desktop systems is the notion that the desk must be just big enough for a keyboard, mouse and monitor, and that it be slam up against a wall in a college dorm room, child's bedroom, or office cubicle. These days, people buy homes designed around walk-in closets that would swallow a child's bedroom of just a couple decades or so ago. Most homes that I helped to build just 2 decades ago usually included a larger office space that could rival a master bedroom, with built-in library accommodations, executive sized desks and a sofa/chair or two. Add to that trend, wide open floor plans and what amounts to otherwise wasted space elsewhere in the home.
Now I have the business side on my desk 5.5' off of the front wall, with my 12" mains baffles 24" off the same wall, toed-in just so, and the stereo image is absolutely glorious and I can surf and jam without ever leaving the spot. I have a sofa on either side of me, and all of my daily paraphernalia within reach. I can also set up my stand mount speakers more ideally as well when I feel like listening to those, and I also have a pair of 12" subs firing under my desk, with the sofas acting as absorptive chokes of sorts. While the room still has acoustic gremlins, they're out of range from where I sit now and it solved a lot of room issues that I simply don't need to care about any longer.
I can use towers, studio monitors, bookshelf, or pretty much any type of speaker or power here. No more being teased with dreadfully tiny woofers and flea-watt amperage of what trend marketers think I should have for this purpose. I ended up with what amounts to a high performance studio arrangement, that is disguised as a desktop PC setup, across the end of an 12' wide, x 26' long room, adjoining a double opening hallway. All the acoustic crap ends up at the opposite end right where the kitchen entry is, where me or nobody ever hangs at.
With that said, I would encourage anyone strapped to a desktop for any 'real' entertainment value at all to it, to get larger speakers or studio monitors and put them off of the desk and further behind it, on stands or even towers, and just pull the desk away from the wall, even if just temporarily, per session.
Many 2-channel designer trends have an otherwise sterile room with big mono blocks on the floor all by their lonesome, some trendy looking listening chair or two, and a buttload of ultra-expensive acoustic treatments about the room and nothing else. What I have instead proposed here is about the total opposite of that, is much more inviting and convenient, and room for actual living as well, over some otherwise trendy looking system pulled from some eccentric hi-fi magazine cover. Even the off axis sofas on either side present a great experience.
