Originally Posted by
Opti-cal
Thinking about it I suppose my position relative to the speakers would be described as "near-field."
My listening room (loft) is probably 14ft long by 10ft wide on average. I say on average because it is not square and has some "nooks 'n' crannies" due to fire door regulations etc which actually gives it some character (also good holes for storing vinyl!).
It also has shapes in it that naturally break up reflections which is handy.
Due to a pitched roof at both ends I have to have my Quads 4ft into the room and maybe 6ft apart, I'm probably sitting about 6-8ft from them with some space behind me to another sloping roof.
This also replicates the "headphone" effect which the Quads kind of do anyway so it is even more intense.
I have some room treatment and also digital room correction to eliminate bass humps.
The room is just completely full of sound and all of the descriptions of imaging, soundstage, timbre etc become unimportant because there is just pure layers of textured music present.
I get utterly lost and spellbound by it, which to me is the whole point. I like to escape.
Don't get me wrong, I've spent years listening to the nuances of the equipment to make sure it goes with my setup and I'd be a liar if I said I was done yet, but it would be difficult for me to imagine it being that much better (within reason, 10k on treatments in a custom room and another 50k thrown at the system would probably blow it away) but I'm fairly content where it is.
Back on subject - I never have any speakers toed in that much (to the point of pointing directly at my ears). It just never sounds right to me, even if the manufacturer guidelines are to do this. I find with conventional speakers having the face of the drivers/tweeters firing about 1-2ft past my ears gives satisfactory results. With the Quads they are toed in much less and angled up slightly for a better high end response. If they are on the floor you lose a lot at both frequency extremes.
Also never listen with your head flat to a rear wall, really messes everything up in my experience.
Of course different speakers in different rooms may have profoundly different requirements to sound optimal. If you have the patience its best to try different configurations and see what you like. Others may not!
Cheers