Nearfield listening - once more

The local dealers set their speakers up very wide apart with toe in when using large floorstanding speakers in the nearfield. try it, see what you think.like 2 to 1. 2 ft apart for 1 foot back.

My last visit to the shop the large Dali Epikore 11 were around 12' apart with the sofa about 6' back, the speaker toe in was extreme to the point that there was only 1 spot to sit, dead center between the 2, but results were special. I agree with a previous poster that nearfield with toe in does reduce boundary effects, but also think individual speaker design will divide results as much as moving speakers from the long wall to the short wall.

I went to the hifi shop to buy a pair of 2 way stand mount speakers for late night low to moderate listening because my big floorstanders needed some volume to really jell. I hung out at the shop a few hours listening, talking to the owners and on my own decided to max the power to my floorstanders instead. With their permission I borrowed a pair of Mc611 power amps to replace my very nice Hegel H590. Low volume listening was transformed!!! detail, dynamics, image specificity, depth, everything just came to life like I've never heard from a large speaker b4. With less than 1 watt i was listening to an effortless presentation. 

I bought and sold a half a dozen used speakers in the $25k(retail)price range and was dissatisfied because low volume listening didn't satisfy for one reason or another. I wouldn't have believed a 600 watt amp would sound different than a 300 watt amp at a half a watt output, and maybe there's more going on than the wpc here, but I've become an advocate for component matching now as the most important thing we can do for our speakers.