Anyone try Audio Physic's LS placement philosophy?

Check the AP website for a better explanation of the setup. I've used their setup, with very minor tweaks, with three different pairs of speakers, with quite good results.

If nothing else, reading the AP instructions may enlighten you a bit on speaker-room interaction/s.

I have heard the Virgos set up in a store using several different placemnet schemes. The one that worked magic looked like it was per AP's set-up scheme. The only problem was visual. Sitting on the couch with the speakers fairly close and wide apart just didn't look right. It made me quite uncomfortable at first. I closed my eyes and after a while I was able to forget about where they were, and the sound was phenomenal. Very solid imaging. Huge soundstage that was strongly centered on the "stasge", but had huge ambience. I was concerned that images would just be huge, bloated and non centered, but this was not he case. I have heard these speakers in a number of different environmnets, and they sound very different each time, rnaging from some of the best sound i've heard to good, but not great.

soundstage.com has a review in the 6/15 section for ARC's newest entry level...

I have Audio Physic Virgo IIs. I use their placement philosophy, but instead of having them in the center of the room, I have them one quadrant back (as per Audio Physic's other, more practical recommended placement option). I find it works very well - imaging and bass response is beautiful. I tried placing them in the center of my room, but it just looked a bit rediculous and my bed was almost in the way. It may work well in a dedicated listening environment but not in a bedroom or living room scenario - just not practical.

I followed AP's basic premise (well away from rear and side walls, toe'd in, sitting slightly about 5' from the speakers with the speakers about 5' apart) and it works very well. I'm using Spica angelus in a small room and the imaging is excellent. I didn't do any elaborate mapping of the room ... just followed the basic setup and experimented a little.

I think AP's most salient point was to try to remove reflections from side walls which cause the brain to become confused over the location of the source of a sound. This is done by sitting as close to the speakers as is allowed by driver integration, by toeing in, and by maintaining some distance from the side walls (or placing objects at the side walls to break up the reflections).

Overall I'd have to say I'm a big fan of their web page on speaker placement as it explains its reasoning very clearly and logically, and it took the performance of my modest system to a whole new level.

There was a comment above about sitting disconcertingly close to the speakers and I think this is true ... it looks really odd at first to have the speakers so close and so far apart ... but the image size is the reward for such an odd setup. I don't have to worry about WAF since I have a dedicated listening room, but I can see WAF being a critical issue for some.

Finally here's the link :

http://www.audiophysic.de/produkte/aufstellung/aufstellung_e.html