Speaker distance and tow in?????/

Nrenter, I just looked at your system and it doesn't appear the equipment is the issue at this point. As you say, the room... How big is the room? I assume there is no other location than the corner of your room to set up? It appears the speaker location is locked with the firaplace hearth, thus you are unable to pull them out from the wall a bit? I wish I could bring my XLO disk over and play with the pink noise and speakers, maybe just an inch or so.
J.D.

Sean, can you elaborate on that 'old trick'.. do you mean you can find a better placement by using mono and once that is achieved then going back to stereo? (maybe a condensed answer if you've already posted this) I couldn't find it. Also, thank you Rives for your link.

Jadem6,

My room is about 18' x 18' with 14' ceilings. My positioning issues are 2 fold: 1) I share this space with my wife and 3 year old son, and 2) I've got this Mitsubishi 48" RP TV that limits my placement (damn TV - it took buying a big screen TV to learn that I'm not a big screen TV type of guy). I've changed things around so that the TV is no longer between my speakers, but it's still taking up space in my room. If the TV was gone, I'd put a speaker on either side of the fireplace and be able to pull them out from the walls.

However, my comprimise is allowing me to use a 2 pair of 4 1/2' twisted CAT-5 DIY speaker cables (bi-wired) instead of the the 15' Audioquest GR-8 cables. Nice improvement in detail and clairity.

Nrenter, yea I figured setting up on each side of the fireplace was out of the question. Tough room, almost a cube. I'll look at a couple of my accoustics books to see if there are other thoughts. I'll let you know in a day or so.

Jadem6,

Not necessary. I've accepted the fact that this is something I have to live with for the time being. However, it was a great lesson to learn - placement and room setup is more important (IMHO) than the hardware.

Maybe what the ladies tell us is actaully true - it's not what you have, it's what you do with it.

I'm sure there are audiophiles out there (none that visit the Audiogon forums, however) that constantly upgrade their hardware to no satisfaction, not realizing their room (or physical setup) is to blame.

An investment in a couple of hours one afternoon boxing up all my stuff and taking it over to a different room saved me unnecessary "upgrades". Sure there are things I'd like to do to my system (re-tube, new CD player, power cords, etc), but I consider those tweaks to my existing setup rather than looking to replace my core components.