Speaker positioning: why do audiophiles neglect this so much?

You guys sure make things needlessly complicated.

I spent a good amount of time positioning the speakers in my dedicated room. I ran strips of masking tape on the floor at 1/3, 1/4, and 1/5 room width. Then perpendicular strips every six inches from the front wall. I tried 19 different positions, making note of the impact on sound at each position. Once I found a spot that sounded best, I adjusted toe to taste. I then dialed the position in with a laser measure. I now have the speakers positioned equally within an 1/8" in all directions. Oh, and the listening chair is precisely placed as well.

Small adjustments can result in a big difference.

Sonic79,

Well 19 positions and 19 different sounds. How did you decide what you liked best? Did you have some kind of reference sound for this.

And the precisely placed listening chair????? I assume it is on some kind of centered axis between the speakers and you sit precisely on that axis as best you can.

You are working on a perfect symmetry model, and it has to be perfect with left-right symmetry to be close, both in dimension and room furnishing. This is usually hard to achieve, though not impossible. The Dave Wilson video mentions very early that it does not take much to throw off methods using ratios, as you are doing.

Secret Guy,

It is not all that complicated, but it is necessary for the best sound. As I mentioned, for background listening or just sound in the room, nothing matters.

I'm another of the stuff between the speakers culprits. I have a dedicated listening room but it's small. One wall has a door in it two walls are pretty much entirely covered with record and CD storage. So there is nowhere else for the hi fi to go except between the speakers. The wall between the speakers has the window in it, so the record/cd storage can't be moved to there.

I also have big speakers in this small room - and they do work well following careful attention to setup and room acoustics. (I do have some pictures on the wall with the door and could probably make a small improvement by eliminating them and putting in some treatment. But I enjoy looking at the pictures. Would I do it differently in a lager room - naturally. But I'm not going to move house for the sake of the hi fi - or eliminate my music collection to make space in the room to move the hi fi from between the speakers.

If you are not able to hear with this album the soundscape OUT of the speakers, especially completely outside of them SIMULTANEOUSLY by the left and by the right, with this recording, you have a problem with the relation between your speakers and your room size and geometry or a treatment problem or a mechanical control problem or the three problem at the same time...

Dont try with an electronical equalizer it will not work ALONE to solve this problem like wrongly claim some here...An E.Q. is a useful tool yes but not the solution by itself alone here...

For example in some piece of the album there is three harpsichords, two outside of the speakers completely by left and right and the third in the perfect center...The voices comes in front or sometimes at left or right in the thirty pieces of the album......

Acoustic and psycho-acoustic are sciences with principles with which we can experience and devise experiments and from which we even may create acoustic devices and tools... I know it because i did it...

The timbre perception , imaging, listener envelopment , dynamic, soundstage are not MAGICAL events created by the gear pieces by themselves alone by the power induced by the BRAND name, 😁but MOSTLY acoustic phenomena which are TRANSLATIONS of the original recorded acoustical cues in your own room, which acoustic information the gear ONLY convey but do not FULLY produce it by itself and did not optimize it by itself either, we need to determine by acoustic treatment and acoustic mechanical control the specific Ears/ Room relation to the speakers/gear for that...

If the sound image and soundstage are confined here BETWEEN the speakers plane your relation speakers/ room is far from being optimal...Sorry...

And the culprit is probably not some brand name piece of gear itself, or the system itself which is not probably the problem , save if your gear is of a bad design for sure, but usually the problem will be the relation between the system and the room lack of or unbalanced treatment and lack of acoustic control ...

The speakers type must be chosen for the room size and geometry but the location of the speakers and their precise postioning will not be enough either in most cases...You will need at least room treatment and probably some degree of room mechanical control with Helmholtz devices to gain an OPTIMAL result...

By the way this is part two of a very beautiful original Columbia album titled "Moondog" which i purchased when i was 24 years old and i am almost 71....