O.C.D. Speaker placement

Mismatched differences between your ears/speakers by an inch or less should make no significent difference. If it does your should pick it up in hearing a slight shift in the stereo imaging towards the speaker furthest way. But that is only with your head in a vise. Moving your head about, or shifting in your chair, will cause a greater shift than that.

Rather than concern yourself with such minor differences in distances, you might re-direct your energies in perfecting not only the direct sound, but the sound reflecting off the walls, ceiling, and floors. And fine tuning your toe in. Doing so will improve your sound much more and will certainly challenge your OCD problems. This can keep you busy fussing around for years.

FWIW, IMHO, Exact measurements in speaker/listening position set up can be useful in initial set up IF you just happen to know what measurements should be, but can also be detrimental. Exact measurements can cause a reinforcement of nulls and nodes which are potentially problematic.

Get OCD about your sound, not exact/balanced physical measurements.

First determine how far the speakers need to be out into the room for best tone/soundstage/bass/etc. Then make sure the speakers are the same distance from the side walls. Then tie a string to the middle of your listening chair and pull it to tweeter of one speaker. Keep your finger at that spot and pull it to the tweeter of the other speaker. This will put the speakers at the same distance from your ears/listening position and should give you balanced sound and symmetry if your room is symmetrical.

Lol tpreaves, my psychologist said it would be theraputic to talk about it ;-) please don't judge me, I know I'm crazy...

Thanks for the input guys, I think I should redirect my ocd'ness towards acoustic treatments and not worry about the other. Elescher, I measured the distance from the back of the speaker to the back wall, the sides to the side walls and have my chair centered in my room. When I do the string test from the center of my chair to the tweeters, I'm off by something like 1/2" to 3/4". Maybe my room isn't square? Anyways, I'm over it, for now. I was just partially curious if anyone else out there was as crazy about it as I was.

On a side note, i like all of your set-up's. Roxy, you ought to put your components on your page, maybe a couple of pics too :-)

Perhaps on to anal, I check my speaker distances weekly. I read some of your previous threads and I noticed you have a great thirst for knowledge. You took the time to do the speaker measurements it should be extremely easy to solve your problem. Only than will you know if it makes a difference. EVERYTHING MATTERS. Good luck.

Yes and yes (personally). I've ranted about placement before, and its's mission critical, far as I am concerned. But, unless your room is perfectly symmetrical, I wouldn't expect your optimum speaker placement to be either. I start with measurements, try to calculate room nodes, and plunk'em down where the tape measure and laser leveler suggests. Then I move them, and never look at the measuring tools again. One example, center-fill on the sound stage: with a perfectly measured symmetrical setup, in my room, squeues the image to the right. Move the right speaker about an inch further away, it balances perfectly. Asymmetrical, but in my room, where they work better. Then I throw some tape on the floor to mark the spot, as they get moved a lot (a bit of a high traffic area). Every now and then I revisit placement, but usually come back to the current marks -- which were the product of an afternoon of monkeying around with the help of a neighbor who's also a professional sound engineer. Which helped. A lot.