Pleasurably better, not measurably better

@pinotnoir , agreed, how can a "single" mic possibly capture the same thing a "pair" of ears does? Impossible.

@chmaiwald Great!  Food comparison.  McDonald's burgers measure better than any other fast food burger for consistency.   Despite that, I only eat Angus ground sirloin burgers at Le Petit French restaurant because they taste better to me.  Amir's answer-Le Petit's burgers are too expensive so I am throwing away money when I could have purchased half a dozen McDonald's.  

Last night I enjoyed listening to a 1912 recording of Gounod's Romeo & Juliet.  It wasn't hifi but it had dynamic sounding singing of high quality.  Until I moved into my custom listening room 3 years ago, I did not enjoy the sound of these 78 rpm transfers to LP.  Now, it's pleasurable and I am stunned at the transfer which had virtually noiseless 78 rpm surfaces.  Then I heard the famous Mitropoulos Mahler 1st Symphony from 1941 on CD transfer.  That was fabulous (I've made copies for friends who heard it at my home and were also astonished).  These were single horn and mike recordings.  

@pinotnoir - Agree! 

One thing I’ve found very pleasurable is stereo crosstalk cancellation. I love the sound it creates, but find the methods used to achieve it difficult to live with. It tends to be a real "head in a vice" kind of listening experience, often with a divider panel right in my face. I’ve always thought that 2 channel stereo upmixing to more channels could be a better solution, but there’s no easy way to do it cleanly. There are sophisticated methods but I haven’t tried them yet.

Last night I decided to try a rather messy and easy way of turning two channel recordings into three channel playback. The center channel is created by simply summing L+R, the Left channel is mixed as L-R, the Right channel is mixed as R-L. It occurred to me that if these three channels were played through speakers positioned correctly they would produce crosstalk elimination while also allowing sounds from different directions in the sound field to approach the head in roughly the right directions. It works and sounds pretty good, but the more surprising thing was how pleasant it sounded anywhere in the room. I tried setting up the speakers closer or further apart, arranged in a U-shape, or all flat against the wall. Regardless it produced a nice sense of spaciousness on stereo recordings with center panned vocalists and instrumentals staying behind the center speaker no matter where I moved in the room, with a respectable sense of depth. This ain’t accurate. It’s messy. But if you’re not in the sweet spot, or even if you are in the sweet spot, it does make center panned sounds much cleaner as there’s no interference patterns or cross talk on anything panned center, and overall it’s just a downright pleasant arrangement to listen to when you’re sitting off axis or moving around the room.

In some ways, this arrangement is "pleasurably better." 

The effect of your mixing is quite similar to the follwoing speakers placements and wiring suggested by one of the members here (sorry I do not recall his name).  The 1st pair of speakers are wired normally and place close together to simulate your center chaneel.  On the 2nd pair of speakers however, the positive terminals are wired normally but the negative (ground) terminals are wired together.  Due to the phase (polarity) opposition, the R2 will only remits the R-L signal and L2 remits the L-R signal.  I tried this setup and, admitedly, I do not find the sound more pleasing than playing 1st pair of stereo speakers alone with proper placement.  The normal setup will render better imaging and soundstage, etc.