How far apart do you position your speakers ?

Hi guys, been out of town and just picked up on this thread. In the past 3 to 4 months, I have done extensive testing of my speaker placement. Inititally, I used the Cardas Golden triangle system. It worked well, I use an mtm and always use the inside edge of the tweeter as my measureing point. My speakers are 111 inches apart and 111 inches from tweeter to ear. Full tow pointed to the outside of my head or to the ear. I built my speakers, they are very flat with excellent time end very good phase alignment, so they don't mind the tow.
I use the same woofer as the totem forest so I tried the totem idea of facing forward. My center stage collapsed, I started slowly and continually moving the speakers inward and at around 7 ft apart, I Ended up with a very slight tow on the speakers and Staging was fully restored with just the slightest bit more laid back sound in the upper mid to upper end, a slight loss of detail, but still a nice sound stage.
Oddly enough I hadn't heard this 83% idea, but had moved the speakers out until the tweeters were 99 inches apart and 120 inches to my ear...(82.5%) here, I had the tightest center, very good depth and heigth, pinpoint imaging was not quite as good as the Cardas method, but overall a nice effect.
I went back to the Cardas

I measure speaker distances from the center of the woofer.

Where you measure from depends on your speaker. On a 2 way it is normally on the top center of the woofer below the tweeter, on a 3 way it would be the center of the midrange. I have an MTM with a staggered tweeter.
Think about what it takes to time align your speakers and think of the center of that alignment. This will give you consistant results.

Timlub,

How about flat panel speakers?

Jim Smith arrives at the distance between speakers by measuring from the center of the tweeters. The distance to the listening position is from the tweeter to your ear. I'm sure there are situations where the 83% formula does not result in the best sound--every room and speaker are different--but I have found that this tends to work best when I've tried it not only on my own system but with friends as well. Another interesting "tip" in Jim's book is that you should sit fairly close to the rear wall--say between one and two feet. I did not sit anywhere near the rear wall in my old listening room but since moving and setting up in a different space I am now 16" from the wall behind me and am getting very good sound.