Who positions their speakers straight ahead (zero tow in) and why.

My speakers are big ADS 910's, in the cradle stand for up/down adjustments.

My small room is 12'2" x 15'9" with 9' ceiling.

I have looked at every speaker position website and find Cardas most helpful.

If you are familiar with the ADS 910, both speakers tweeters are on the right side of the cabinet with the mid beneath and to the left, and two bass also staggered toward the left.

None of them are in the center midline or directly beneath one another.

Because they are asymmetrical, an accurate toe-in for each, or straight ahead position, or ideal distance from side wall in such a small room has been impossible to calculate.

My solution has been to stow the masking tape, slide rule, level, weighted strings and tape measures and near field listen with my chair about 3-1/2' in front.  The speakers are toed in but unequally because of their size in a too narrow room.

Looks very dumb but the sound is satisfactory.

For me toe in or straight ahead is everything...and nothing.

As others have noted, every experience is different. Here is mine for what it is worth:

- room is semi anechoic: rock wool covers the walls (6”) and ceiling (14”), with fire resistant burlap covering that

- rugs cover most of the floor

- room has a gable roof, 8ft at the peak, 3 ft at the walls, with a large gable opening to the right.

- the distance behind, to the right and to the left of the speakers is - roughly - equal to the distance between the speakers

- the speakers are not toed in

- the speakers are Altec Lansing 604Cs in homemade cabinets that were made to Altec specifications. They are co-axial.

- I sit about 10 feet in front of the speakers.

This gives me a wide and deep soundstage with solid imagery. On most records, the speakers disappear. In many records, the sound is holographically surround.

See theaudioatticvinylsundays.com about page for more. 

To toe in or not to toe in..that is the question.  Fortunately, the answer can be found with a little experimentation and absolutely no financial cost.  Trust your ears and enjoy your system. 

It’s entirely an alchemy dependent on the OEM speaker brand influences in constant tension with the dimensions/design/ resulting warts of the listening room.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” general rule to follow because of varying brand speaker designs and performance capabilities. For example, the dispersion of a ribbon tweeter vs. A soft dome tweeter, vs. Concentric centred with a woofer design may all be different. Follow your OEM speaker manual for first guidance.

For the bespoke listening room factors portion in the equation, there are significant points of first reflection that are complemented with secondary ones, all three of which need to be identified and tamed if necessary.

TAKEAWAY:

There is no substitute for hands-on experimentation..

I’m with @akg_ca and others here. There’s no correct answer for every situation. I use a lot of toe-in with my current room, which is played long ways using horn speakers. One issue I just experimented with addressing is opposite side reflections, as shown by line "B" in @akg_ca ’s drawing. My side walls are about 10 feet from my listening position, so there’s an extra 20 foot path length to create a decent delay. But, I wondered what would happen if I used angled panels to redirect that opposite wall bounce away from my listening position. The result is very interesting, and overall quite good in terms of imaging enhancement. So even when fairly significantly delayed, cross reflections can be detrimental to imaging, which could be a reason someone might not want to toe in their speakers in some rooms.

One thing that I found enlightening from this experiment is that my old idea of only worrying about reflections that are inside the "image shift" window is not adequate. There’s more to imaging than just the left to right positioning of items in the sound field. By controlling that opposite side reflection that’s outside the image shift time window, according to the chart I’m looking at, a lot more dimensionality and immersive effect has been preserved. On some electronic music it’s pretty much a full surround experience with just two channels.