Seeking more 3d imaging, deeper/wider soundstage

Realremo, to check to see if your speakers are in phase, you simply reverse the connections on the back of **one speaker only** - not both.

If this works, you will immediately notice greater center fill and sharp images between the speakers. If it does not work, the images will become more diffuse.

Regarding tube equipment reliability: tube amps and preamps are usually fairly reliable- some more so than transistor equipment- it depends a lot on the manufacturer. The issue is the tubes themselves, which are considered user-replaceable, which is why they are in sockets. When a tube goes bad, quite often it will tell you about itself :) So you don't have to send the product somewhere to get serviced, you simply replace the tube and you are down the road. If it were any other way it would not be possible for tube equipment manufacturers to be in business for decades at a time!

Its important to distinguish between the reliability of the chassis as opposed to that of the tubes. For example in our amplifiers if a tube fails it will not damage the amplifier (although it could blow a fuse); our amps are stable enough that I have a demonstration I do at audio shows where I remove power tubes from the amp while it is playing music. You don't hear any change- the amp continues to play as if nothing happened. Now not all tube amps are like that but OTOH its not really important- they will hold up just fine, hence the existence of used tube amps that are heavily sought after 50 years after they were made!!

IOW don't worry about the reliability. Right now it seems you have bigger fish to fry. Keep us informed of your progress.

Realremo, no worrries, mate, there's a very good chance the next CD you play is also inverted phase, so it all evens out. Always look on the bright side.

So interesting things happened last night. I found the right
speaker was out of position a few inches, so I fiddled with
it using a tape measure. Now I have both of them about 28
inches from the back and side walls. There is about 6 feet
between them and I sit 8 feet from either speaker. Imaging
returned, soundstage grew in width and height, but still
hovers around the speakers.
I listened for about 2 hours, enjoying the improvement my
tweaks gave, then I tried inverting the phase on the left
speaker. The soundstage wrapped around my left shoulder and
behind me. I was pretty stunned at the difference this made.
Later I listened with only the right speaker out of phase,
the center of the image traveled out from between the
speakers and sat just right of center in the room.
I used to have my system on the long wall of the room, I
swapped it to the short wall earlier this year, to get a
little more distance between the listening position and the
speakers. The imaging and soundstage I had on the long wall
was lost. I have been chasing that sound ever since, I think
now I know that one speaker was hooked up out of phase on
the long wall, accidentally. This actually sounds really
nice for certain electronic music, but it makes tracks with
vocals sound a little strange. Haven't tried classical with
this yet.
So, no one hooks up one speaker out of phase on purpose, do
they? This is an incorrect hook-up, right?

Having one speaker out of phase with the other will result in loss of soundstage, poor center fill, reduced bass and overall lack of dynamic punch as the speakers are literally fighting each other.

If you hook one speaker up out of phase, the more phase linear your equipment is, the more the sounds will sit in the speakers. The center will be very diffuse.

Some equipment that struggles with phase shift problems will give you some very odd effects when you put one channel out of phase.

To get low phase shift the equipment has to have wide bandwidth. Our ears don't hear phase shift at all with a single tone, but they can detect phase shift problems over a band of frequencies. If your equipment has low phase shift, you will get a better soundstage as a lot of the soundstage information is presented in the form of shifted phases at various frequencies depending on the room in which the recording was made.

Sometimes bass is tricky to hear on some systems so to test for phasing I select a recording that has a vocalist positioned dead center in the recording. Then I can listen for bass and center-fill.

Bo1972 has been conspicuously absent from Audiogon. I hope he is ok and not just sitting in the corner of a room in self imposed exile upon discovering that he he arrogantly scolded a world class audio designer by accident.

Bo, show some character and post your apology to Atmasphere. Sure, your carefully fabricated expertise on all things audio has taken a hit in this community but running away from your mistake isnt the way to restore it. Simply say you were wrong, everyone will say "cool" and then you can go back to posting positive reviews of products you sell without full disclosure.