Speaker positioning: why do audiophiles neglect this so much?

Bobbydd, re comments on ’stuff between speakers’, even though Jim Smith sez so it ain’t necessarily so. For example if you listen to your speakers toed in so that the axis crosses in front of your listening position there is a fair amount of signal which has the wall behind the speakers acting as a 1st reflection point. Treating that wall with diffusion materiel or even stuff like equipment, bookcases, recordings etc can produce a much cleaner signal. What I think about Jim’s advise is that it is more important when dealing with sound waves hitting sensitive equipment, such as phono cartridges, and causing distortions. I’ve even seen ’knowlegable’ audophiles place TT’s in corners. Go figure.

An interesting experiment you can conduct to see how this works is to make a panel of materiel which absorbs high(er) frequencies and place it next to the inside surface of the speaker. You might be surprised at the benefit it can bring. Looks ugly though. :-)

Browse through the section of pairs of speaker cables currently on sale on Audiogon.  Look at the average length of those cables.  What does that tell you?

What about dipoles? They have a figure 8 radiation pattern the back wave being out of phase with the front they require to be pulled out into the room but between the loudspeakers, there is a null thus it will not be a problem to put gear between them. Or horns many of these have a more narrow frontal wave launch this isn't negatively affected by being placed near room boundaries or by having gear between them. But consider the audiophile darling a box with a dynamic driver this design radiates off to the sides and can be greatly affected by placing items near them or by room boundaries.

Yes indeed @johnk. I will add that sometimes looking at pictures can be misleading. I have the Fyne F704 speakers which are one model above Jim Smith’s speaker. I have also upgraded the crossovers with top notch parts.

I worked with a dealer who is very skilled at listening and speaker set-up and after some 3 hours we had them pulled far away from side and front walls with ideal toe in. Our listening room is also our living room. No TV. We wanted that way so we could have music playing in our home often. Open concept home and the room is very large with 10 foot ceilings

Well, I decided to try something different and placed the speakers in the corners some 13 feet apart inside edge to inside edge. They are only 12-14 inches from the side walls and some 4 feet from the wall behind them. They are toed in pointing almost at my head. Really midway between my ears and shoulders The room is far more at play now. Yes, the room is impacting the sound more in this position. However, we all like the resulting sound better! Most all would say the before picture would sound better. Pictures don’t and can’t tell the whole story.

Your speaker’s design, unique room characteristics, furnishings and subjective sonic priorities all come into play.

A lot of setups are in dual purpose rooms.

Systems in living spaces just aren't going to have speakers pushed into the room as they should be to breathe.

If you can't have your speakers 4-6 feet out,  3-4 from sidewalls, you're possibly missing what they're capable of.