position of speakers & gear

Does it bother those of you that put your keyboards to the side & when you play them, only one ear is facing your speakers? Does that throw any of you off?

I'm trying to figure out a way to fit my MPC 2500 & keyboard controller in the middle of my desk, so that when I play them, my ears are triangular to the speakers. ( like it shows in all the manual setups, etc.)

But I just cannot find a comfortable position where they occupy the same space.

When I tried the MPC on a type of stand that sits above the keyboard, my elbows/forearms always hit the keys on the controller and my arms/shoulders got tired after a while from keeping them up on the MPC all the time.

I just hate having only one ear facing my speakers while I'm playing the keys. It just doesn't feel right.

Any tips? Am I trippin about the "ears-facing-the-speakers" thing?

(Well, upon posting...I see it totally screwed with the format of how I visually represented my setup, but I think you get the gist of what I'm saying)

I took some measurements and built myself a small shelf to put on top of my table using a cheap plank from Home Depot that I cut into 3 pieces and then screwed together in a U-shape like this:

_________________________________________________
| |
| |


So with gear and everything my studio looks like this:

_____ ____
| spkr| | spkr |
| | | |
==== Rackmount ====
| _________________________________________________ |
| | | |
| | Synth | MPC & Other gear |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Table |
| |


My rack gear on top of the shelf, a synth on the table below the shelf with enough clearance for me to get to access keys & sliders; MPC and other stuff to the side. The gear is not too much on one side or the other for me to be bothered by it, though I am getting rid of more stuff so I can have everything more centrally located. But everything is within arm's reach like I wanted and I don't have to move out of the speaker field often.

So perhaps, instead of thinking horizontally, think vertically and consider adding some sort of shelves to your setup. Pretty sure it cost me a whole $8 for the piece of wood I used to make mine. You could easily have your MIDI controller underneath the shelf with your MPC sitting on top of it.