TJ

Jeff- One excellent source of speaker positioning that results in very near-field listening is www.cardas.com. George Cardas is a high end maker and designer of audio cables and other audio-electrical products. His design principles are based on the Fibonacci ratios referred to as golden ratios. These ratios have been discovered in many areas such as architecture and there are still stock and commodity traders who use the golden ratios as a tool to analyze trading charts. His speaker positioning formula is strictly based on golden ratio formulas. When I discovered George's site a few years ago, the position I had my speakers in were fairly close to George's formula. I positioned my speakers exactly to his formula and that was it for my room. I did extensive experimenting with the toe-in and finally found the perfect spot. My room is almost 11x15. System is positioned on the short wall with the sound going down the long length of the room. Speakers are slightly 4.5 feet from the wall behind them, almost 34 inches from the sidewalls and slightly over 4.5 feet between the speakers. I formed an equilateral triangle, so my ears are slightly over 4.5 feet from the speakers. Out of curiosity, I have tried other speaker positioning techniques but I always come back to the Cardas setup. No boom, bloat and smearing of the bass. I am totally immersed in the sound. You are not sitting in the first row, you are on stage. The sound stage is huge. My music runs from Bach to Behemoth. I am not using small speakers. I am using floor standers. I have set my listening position 1.5 times the distance between the speakers and the sound is too distant and the bass is destroyed by the room nodes. The formula works the best in standard rectangle rooms and gets very complicated in modern type living and dining rooms with many open walls and different angles. Rives audio can help in those areas who has also said that the Cardas formula works in a standard rectangle room. Pierre Sprey at www.mapleshaderecords.com, a true audio iconoclast, has some very good comments about speaker positioning including that one should never sit more than 5 feet from your speakers and most everybody sits too high in their listening seats. Keep searching. There is the ultimate sweet spot to find which will stand out from any other listening position.