I have started experimenting with toe-over in stead of toe-in. By toe-over, I mean toeing the speakers in so far that they cross in from rather than behind the seating position. The idea comes from this article: Setup of WG Speakers.pdf (libinst.com). Initial results seem fine. When sitting off-center (e.g. in one end of a three-seater) the image shifts much less to the nearest speaker since I am listening to the furthest away speaker on-axis and the nearest is around 25 degrees off-axis. In the center position, the image seems considerably narrower than when speakers are set up the conventional way. It only extends to the speakers but not beyond them. I compensated a bit by moving them a bit further apart. On the other hand, the center image gained solidity. I will keep it like this for a few weeks, then revert back for a few weeks before I draw final conclusions. The trend now is that I will keep them like this for normal use when we are more people using the living and for movies and TV. But for me-time alone with music, I might turn them out to get that larger-than-life soundstage back. At least for large scale music, arena-rock, symphonic, opera, big-band, etc. For small-scale music like chamber music, jazz, blues, non-arena rock etc. I might stay with the toe-over.
Have anyone else tried this? What do you think of it? Oh, and pardon the ironing board in the corner.
Have anyone else tried this? What do you think of it? Oh, and pardon the ironing board in the corner.