HOGWASH!!!! Speaker placment with those speakers is NO DIFFERENT than with any other conventional ported design!!! Dipoles might cause some tricky phase cancelation challenges in proper room possitioning over conventional radiators, but that's about it! Ported speakers usually couple differntly in a room than sealed box designs for traditional piston models. But there's arelly nothing special about finding the right placment for the seats and speakers in most modest sized rooms! YES, YOU DO NEED TO PLACE THEM, LIKE ALL SPEAKERS, CORRECTLY FOR PROPER SOUND! possitioning, like seating possition, WILL BE THE CRITICAL FACTOR FROM A FOUNDATIONAL STANDPOINT. But one you find a place in the room(and from where you sit) where you're getting "flat" and "even"(from speaker to speaker) frequency resonse, you'll be getting superb tight, authoritative, "weighty", dynamic, fast, articulate and accurate (within the limits of the speaker, like any) sounding bass and balance from the speaker!!! From there, all you need to do is get the proper "toe-in" and "aim" for the speaker in relation to the seating possition(s) for proper harmonic balance and immaging, and deal with acoustics for the room(ok, more challenging issue).
Of course, you must consider width of soundtage and how well each speaker(In this case, the Watt puppies) images from their relationship with each other and the listening possition.
That said, as someone who'e sold WATT Puppies for years, they are no more tricky to set up than ANY Speaker within reason! I've heard this kind of "jibberish" from owners of Thiels(which I've owned and sold on a retail level as well), and others. Now dipolar designs, like Magnepan's, that's another story entirely! Getting proper set up with those "phase-cancelling" designs is a bit challenging in most smaller rooms. Especially off axis! But,you're dealing with a basic ported speaker, which reacts the same as most desigs in an average room.
A quick and easy way for you to find a very very good place for your speakers in your room(once you find the best listening possition to start from), is to simply place the woofers/port where your head is going to be at the listening possition, and move your head around near where the speakers bass woofers/port are going to end up at the front of the room, and listen for the most even, tight, weighty(not boomy), fast, and most flat frequency response! Infact, you can do this for all speaker possitions around the room, while you leave that speaker(playing stereo summed into mono) in your seating possition!
Once you find a place where the speaker will sound and MEASURE "flat", you can move the speaker there, and go back to your chair and listen!!!!!...you'll be shocked and amazed! Once you do that, you must consider the width of the soundstage, and relationship between all the speakers. There also may be some reinforcement/cancelation issues when you get all speakers in place ultimately. So you'll have to listen to the final placement arrangement for all speakers together.(a good rule of thum is too keep different ratio dimmensions between the relationship for speakers to boundaries, and with respect to each other, or speaker). Still, if you know approximately how wide you want or need your speakers to be for proper imaging from your seat, you can move your head around(or measure) where you think you want to place the speakers approximately. There WILL INDEED BE PLACES(within inches usually!!!) where your speaker will respond the best! Again, then you can figure out how wide the speakers will end up after you'll do this for the other speaker(s).
While this is, by no means, the "end-all" of speaker location plotting in a room, it will work extremely good!!!..and as good as most need without "EQ'ing" the bass out!(effectually, you're EQing the speaker by locating it in a room!)
For a more comprehensive approach to acccurately placing speakers, and getting better response and balance for your speakers for maximum performance, as well as adressing acoustic issues for your room, might I SUGGEST CONTACTING RIVESAUDIO.COM FOR MORE HELP! They are the only company I know of currently that advertises for acoustical and system set up consulting and related services! I've talked with him extensively , and believe that company has a good grasp on how to more PROPLERY SET UP ROOMS, SPEAKERS, ACOUSTICS, ETC! Might be worth looking into for your SERIOS INVESTMENT in your otherwise excellent WATT Puppies! I think you'll be pleased, as the room is definitley the most important factor in getting great sound!..at any level!
Good luck
