Is toeing speakers a bad idea?

I remember once upon a time using a Sheffield Labs disc that had an in-phase/out-of-phase track and Doug or Rodger (I cannot remember which) said, when out of phase, to position the speakers enhance the out of focus as much as possible (when out of phase) and then when they were back in-phase, that positioning would result in very tight focus.  So I did that, and that turned out to be what I consider a rather severe toe-in in a near field room, and the focus did wind up being real tight . . . but I lost a whole lot of peripheral sound stage.  Now I don't use any toe-in at all . . . focus is good and I have (by my standards) pretty good peripheral sound stage.

Of course, this is all in a near field listening environment, and that is not what you have. 

Audio Physic has info on speaker placement.  That is the best suggestion I have found to date.  Toe in depends on what you equipment can produce as far as soundstage, dimension, etc.

Happy Listening.

Everything depends on your room and room treatment if when straight too bright 

a bit of toe in can be good ,go to Cardas web sight and there is a informative 

section on speaker setup.

With a large room, why are you placing the speakers 3’ from the wall? When I had a room this size, speakers were 9’ from the front wall.

Do whatever sounds best to YOUR ears, mostly based on the distance between your speakers and how far back you are listening to them. My speakers are very far apart, but the sofa isn’t as far back as it needs to be. So, I toed them in 1” and am extremely happy with the sq. The soundstage got a little more coherent while still exhibiting a huge sound stage front to back and side to side and bass response increased.