Adjusting speaker positioning. What, if anything, to expect?



I am going to adjust my Magico A3’s positioning a little bit to try to optimize their performance and the listening experience. Due to the logistics of the room they’re in, there’s only a limited amount I can move them. I’ll describe the room and what I can do within those limitations. I’m wondering what improvement I might be able to achieve with adjusting positioning.

The room is approximately 14’ x 22’. There is a high vaulted ceiling. about 15’ at it’s peak centered in the room on its horizontal axis. Picture how kindergarten child draws a house. That’s the shape of a cross section of the room and vaulted ceiling.. The speakers are located about 8’ apart centered on the long wall. The front of the A3’s are only out 22" from the wall, the rear of the speakers only 9" from the wall. That can’t be helped. The prime listening position is on a couch about 10’ out from and facing the same wall, also centered. The components are on shelves centered and built into the same long wall the speakers are on. There are some other furnishings, and books above built-in cabinets, line most of the other three walls.

I can move the speakers about a foot farther apart or closer together, and I can change their toe-in. What changes, if any, might I be expecting or hope to achieve moving the speakers within these limited parameters? Could the sound-stage be affected? I’m not sure what the sound-stage should be like anyway. Should it extend to the left or right outside the speakers, or be mainly between the speakers? Right now depending on the recording the vocals and instruments are usually between or no further apart than the actual speakers. Could the treble, midrange, or bass response be augmented or diminished depending on positioning? Are there any other factors that may be affected by positioning alone? Thank you for any guidance and please feel free to ask any questions. Thanks,

Mike
skyscraper
Mike, Imaging is the ability of a system to recreate the location, size and depth of instruments and voices. It is what stereo is all about. Whether or not a system can do this well depends on the type of speaker and acoustical issues with the room including speaker placement. Dynamic speakers like yours radiate sound over a wide area creating rather loud early reflections off the side and front wall. Early reflected sound arrives at your ears just after the direct sound from the speaker blurring the image like an out of focus picture. This is the problem with the smaller rooms we tend to put our systems in. Late reflections like off the rear wall (other side of the room) are heard more as an echo. They are also much lower in volume. Late reflections do not blur the image and can make your room sound larger if the early reflections are controlled. Bass is another issue altogether. Anyway there are threads that discuss finding and controlling early reflections. Moving the speaker will change the location of these reflections. Moving  speakers like yours farther away from the walls diminishes early reflections and improves the image but decreases bass efficiency. This is a strong rational for using separate subwoofers and the reason many audiophiles keep their speakers so far out into the room. You can sort of have the best of both worlds if you keep the speakers right up against the wall and deaden the surrounding wall with acoustic tiles or panels. Millercarbon is an old school symmetrical guy and for speakers like yours I think he is correct although there are some like Roger Sanders that would argue with this. With speakers that are very directional like horns symmetry is not as important. My system set up is perfectly symmetrical because my brain won't tolerate it any other way. It also can't stand to see a crooked picture. My speakers are ESLs and they are also very directional. 
Anyway, when you move your speakers around pay close attention the image. Instruments and voices should be very distinct and float in space.
Close your eyes. It should sound like the band is right in front of you. 
As I oft counsel the method of moving speakers a little one way or the other and listening each time you move them is far from ideal and can only result in finding local maximum speaker positions, at best. You cannot find the absolute best positions for both speakers that way. The only way to find the absolute best positions for any speakers in any room, regardless of room treatments and regardless of the rest of the system, is to use the speaker set-up track on the XLO Test CD or similar test CD. It’s the out-of-phase track. When you get the most diffuse sound using the out-of-phase track you will get the most focused and correct sound when the system is in phase. Even as your system evolves the speaker set-up track can be used again to establish new best speaker positions. Trying to find the absolute best speaker positions by trial and error is like trying to solve x simultaneous equations in x + n unknowns.
Geoffkait, you automatically adjust phase when you listen for the image. Adjusting phase is only important when you have separate drivers such as subwoofers. Think about that. You can move your head side to side and find the exact spot where two speakers are in phase. It is where the image snaps into focus. This of course is the listening position. Phasing subwoofers is certainly more complicated and the best way to do this is by measuring arrival times which requires a microphone and a computer set up for impulse testing. 

Interesting idea to use an out of phase track, I've never done that but it's worth a try. But you don't need to buy a special cd, you just swap the wires over on one of the speakers to invert the phase. When the speakers are perfectly out of phase it sounds like there's a gaping hole in the middle of the sound stage.

When you're looking for a good spot for bass response then you can put the speaker in your listening position and use your ears to find a spot with the most natural response, then you put the speaker driver (along with the speaker obviously) in the position where your ear was. This is mostly used for subwoofer positioning but there's no reason why it wouldn't work with a conventional speaker.

For me, toe in is most noticeable in the highest frequencies as they drop off quite sharply off axis. Also avoid having the bass driver/s in a position where it is equidistant from two surfaces (floor & wall, side wall & back wall etc.)

Buy a laser measurement device. I think I paid $ 80.00 for mine and I use this for other projects as well.