Seeking more 3d imaging, deeper/wider soundstage

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.

3 dimensionality is the land of the high priced spread. Surely your room can be treated, your power cords can be improved, but you will get incremental improvements.... Not until you get good (expensive) components will you achieve your goals.

I hope everyone is appreciating what happened here. The original was what could improve soundstage/imaging more. Shortly thereafter were many suggestions for room correction and reposititioning the speakers. To me, this should have been the first things done. My opinion is to avoid spending money and try to fix the problem by trying solutions that may actually center around room and speaker placement. However, I did notice many posts suggesting replacement of equipment. I see that often and find it very curious. Upgrade your equipment first. Why? I do know that eventually one reaches a level of refinement in sound reproduction that can only be exceeded by better equipment. But, that should'nt be the first level necessary to achieve what the original member wanted fixed. how many times have we had a simple problem to fix and someone suggested spending ungodly sums of money to fix it, when a more simple less expensive (or no cost) alternative existed? Some speakers are so directional that small adjustments in position will result in major changes in dimentionality, sound stage and imaging. Leave the speakers where they were and upgrade to much "better" more expensive equipment and guess what? The imaging and sound stage will still be off. And then you'll have a really pissed off member that came out of pocket unnecessarily. Atmasphere's suggetion was spot on. No cost and actually fixed the problem. This level of correspondence went from speaker placement, to new more expensive equipment, including the age old tube vs solid state undying discussion, to insults and finally to phase correction. Wow! I have to tell you I found the many responses very interesting, technically speaking. The insults back and forth were totally unnecessary. But many totally ignored the original problem as described by the OP. I like that there exist people like Atmasphere, Mapman and others, including Bo1972 that actually came up with viable suggestions. Again, the insults I could do without. But arguments are a two way street. One cannot argue by him/her self. Well, they could but it would be really strange. Also, initially, I didn't interprete Bo1972's posts to be insulting at all. When some did interprete them that way and went after him, that is when it got really ugly. I would like to see one thing in analysis of systems and sound. We speak much about dimensionality, imaging, 3d effect, etc. I would like to see a list of recordings that eveyone agrees exhibit those qualities and therefore, when one does not hear those qualities when being played back on their system, we have a reference to determine if it is the recording or the equipment or even speaker placement or phasing. Realremo stated that he/she possessed recordings that demonstrated those qualities. Would you be so kind as to list a few? I would very much like to experiement to see if I can hear those on my system. I'm finding that many of my digital recordings played back on my system lack real dimensionality. It has been a gradual lessening, but I am noticing it. I'm not really happy with my Audio Research PH5 phono stage and therefore, record playback isn't making me smile as it used to. I think an upgrade to a better phono stage is in the works. However, what digital recording can one offer that has good dimensionality and imaging? I think I do need some good reference material to start with.

Thank all, and do enjoy