Best Speaker Placement Rules you've used?

Hi Alex,
You have a similar room and similar problem to mine. My old HIFI room is around 3.3m x 6.6m. I had used Thiels 2.2; ProAc 2.4 and the Virgo in that room before. When placing the speakers along the short walls, I could not get the ProAc and the Virgo to sound right, especially with the Virgo. The side firing bass were just too boomly.
Then I have the tried using near field placement, placing them along the long wall about 1.2 meters form the front wall and sit almost touching the back wall. You also need to toe in the speaker. It works! Everything opens up with imaging and details that I have never imagine it could!
There is detailed information at the AudioPhysic’s web site. Give it a try if you can afford for this method will place your speaker right in the center of the room making it useless for any other purposes! I hope there is no wife factors in the decision making!
Good Luck

Hi,
MY speakers are 7 ft apart, 18 inches from side walls and 1 ft from back wall, I sit about 8 feet away, I can swear that sound is comming from my cente channel, and sometimes it nothers me because I think mids are getting "smeared"
I have a slight toe-in..and tried them straight facing, I guess I just want to know if thinking the sound is comming from center is a good thing or should I move around things as much as I can in a living room,,,wich aint much! thanks

Thanks Luna for your comments. Unfortunately I can't use the long wall, nor can I place the speakers in the centre of the room (I've checked the Audio Physics site before). I live in an apartment and the combination dining/lounge room has all other rooms coming off it, so it is a heavy traffic area. Hence, I can only have speaker fronts max. 4 feet from rear wall.
Will any sort of rear wall treatment help stop reflection and interference so I can push the speakers closer to the back wall?
If anyone can give suggestions/advice...much appreciated.

5 feet out farther that she likes. :)

I'm a long wall guy, pretty much always have been and i became especially committed to that placement once i got dunlavy's so your milage may vary here. The first order of business is to maximize seperation between the speakers without losing center focus..no toe in and no worries about bass response yet. With the dunlavy's you can't really spread them out too far unless you have a huge room, mine are spread about 10 ft apart.

Next up is dialing in the bass. I read a method somewhere where you start talking with your back against the front wall and start walking slowly into the room. Note where your voice changes and then when it changes again (i tried this as an after thought long after my speakers were dialed in and it ended up with my speakers in about the same place).

Usually, however, my method to dial in bass is to chose the general sopt i want the speakers out from the wall and then start moving the speakers forward and back trying to get the bass to tighten up, minimize boominess and maximize depth. Big steps at first followed by much smaller steps. I've had significant changes with an inch of movement. My guess is that even when using formulas the subtle differences in each room will allow fine tuning benifits to be found if you are patient. I've fine tuning this way over the course of days to get it best for the room. Use references recordings you know well and especially recordings with instruments that you known how they sound live.

Toe in is last and for that it's laser beam towards the ears to start and then tweak it outward to fine tune soundstage and, if needed to soften the highs. Cwlondon's statement about the overrating of toe in may be planer centric as his experience with the monitors seems to support. my speakers totally dissapear.

The long wall set up significantly helps in my current room due to a glass door on one side wall and a big bay window on the other. The long wall gives a lot of distance from the speakers to the first reflection point. some big house plants at those points helped further. My listen couch ended up against the rear wall. As Cwlondon indicates having the seat towards the back wall does help with the bass and here again inches count (what you are doing is manipulating where the speakers and your ears are relative to the room modes but doing it by ear rather than formula). I use pillows behind the head to get rid of rear wall reflections thus making a localized live end/dead end with the dead end at the back. It's pretty much a one head show in the sweet spot with acceptable results outside of it.