Originally Posted by akhenaten:
“Thanks chrisjr, i may get some stands then, for some reason i thought the higher the better, although up until yesterday i had them sitting on top of a couple of buckets.”
Definitely not "higher the better". The best position for speakers is on floor stands where the tweeters (high frequency) drive units in the speakers are at or very close to ear height. Plus with the speakers away from walls and not shoved into corners (either wall to wall or wall to ceiling as they would be on top of the wardrobe).
Being too close to the wall can cause reflections off the wall that interfere with the direct sound from the speakers in unpredictable ways. Corners emphasise the effect, usually in a bad way.
The reason for having the speakers at about ear height is that the tweeter drive units are often more directional than the bass and mid range speaker(s). Assuming the speakers have more than one drive unit of course. So mounting too high or too low can cause the high frequency sounds to appear attenuated relative to the low and mid range frequencies as they fire over or under your ears rather than directly at them.
Buckets are a novel form of stand. Many many years ago when I was a student it was pretty common to <cough> "borrow" </cough> milk crates from the student cafe to use as speaker stands.