severe limiting factor

Kevin, it sounds as if they might be out of phase...judging by your description emulating from the "wooden boxes. Double check your connections..I am not being funny at all, I did the very same thing last week..lol

I agree with Tunes4me that your speakers could well be wired out of phase. A good check for this is to play a mono source, like a voice. If you are properly set up you should have a very sharp center image. Additionally, assuming that solves your first problem, don't be afraid to move your speakers closer to the sidewalls and cross the axis of the speaker well in front of you. You can get a much wider soundstage this way and you won't have an overbright upper midrange/high end from listening on axis. The severe toe in will help avoid the early reflection problem from the side wall. The only downside is you might elevate your bass.

I have the Thiel CS2.4s and can't imagine a problem with imaging. I have mine nearly 9 feet, center to center and sit about 11 feet from them. I am using a total POS Sony DVD player ($160.00 at Good Guys) and I have a great soundstage and imaging with my Rotel integrated doing the DAC work. I think your inital problem is indeed speaker placement. Try moving them further apart temporarily and with a slight toe in, maybe 5-10 degrees. I actually moved mine so far apart at one point that the center image started to disappear but a few inches closer and they snapped back into line. Also, how far from the rear walls do you have them?

Good luck, I love my Theils as do many folks on agon from what I have read.

Sometimes when short-wall placement fails to achieve good results, positioning the speakers along the long wall may work better... I don't know if that would be possible in your room, but if it is, it could be worth a try. You'd be listening fairly near-field, of course, and you may have to play with the positioning and bass EQ, but it may well give better results.

The flat soundstaging could also be caused by a component or cabling mismatch, which is just as likely as anything else. I have heard certain Classe amps sound very two-dimensional in certain situations. Aren't they internally wired with some sort of silver wire? If so, you might want to try cabling products with some silver content...

Kevin emailed me with some specifics, so i'm responding here in hopes that this may help others and / or encourage further commentary that may benefit his situation.

Your speakers are WAY too close together and you're sitting too far back from them at that speaker spacing distance. I agree that you should get them further apart and toe them in a bit to minimize side-wall reflections. For temporary results, you might want to try hanging some wool blankets at the primary reflection points.

You'll also have to experiment with the distance from the front wall to balance out the increased bass reinforcement from the proximity of the side walls. You really need to get them on the long wall if possible.

Other than that, i've never worked with Jon's cross-connected 89259 speaker cabling. I'm not really a fan of heavily stranded conductors as a general rule, especially bare wire braids where the signal can jump from conductor to conductor at random. This type of geometry typically results in smeared treble response and vague placement within the soundstage.

I also agree that the Magnavox may be hurting you, but you should at least have some semblance of imaging / soundstage. This is true even with a "digital fossil" for a front end : ) Sean
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