Speaker Placement/new component

I concur with Onhwy61 completely.

no. speaker placement/alignment is much more dependent upon room characteristics than on the electronics driving them. once you find the "ideal" placement, it should remain the same for virtually all upgrades you make on the rest of the system. but then, i know of some folks who still adjust the vta for every lp they play!

Yes, I second HWY in that you should familiarize yourself with the new sound "before" you experiment with speaker position. Otherwise there are too many vaiables to deal with at once (for me anyway). Also,if you have to power down components when switching out gear you will want to wait until the system is steady again. I just wasted a lot of energy by being impatient and not following this simple concept recently.

No. To truly evaluate any changes in your system, leave everything else unchanged. The differences between components is often very subtle and these changes can easily be overwhelmed by even minute changes in speaker position. After you have thoroughly familiarized yourself with the changes wrought by the new component, then you might have to make some minor changes in speaker setup.

Definately! In my experience this has been true everytime I change a pre-amp, d/a, amp or cables . It seems as if each component sometimes "improves" the sountstage, which in turn allows the speakers to be placed farther apart (and sometimes I have to reduce the width between speakers - in order to achieve a coherent soundstage) This makes the individual sounds more "defined" and separated. In the end, I'm always looking for a "better" component that allows me to place my speakers farther apart. If you are not a person who sits down between his speakers to listen to music, then don't even bother about the above aforemented "improvements".(You'll probably think that speaker placement does not make make much of a difference).This is the way that most of us "audiophiles" seriously listen to music.

Yes, I always tweak speaker placement after changing something that makes a difference in the sound. I have had better results doing so and the change in position "can" be as little as a 1/2 an inch or a few degrees of tow in.