Speaker positioning: why do audiophiles neglect this so much?

Positions matter for audiophiles too? Whoda thunk it.

A lot of setups are in dual purpose rooms.

Systems in living spaces just aren’t going to have speakers pushed into the room as they should be to breathe.

Every time I set them up the Haus-boss will say that the sound is coming from behind the wall, or the sound is too spread out.
And secondly that the speakers are too far out into the room.

This is the curse of the domesticated male, in a domestic cave managed by the females of the species.

A compromise is… some marks on the floor and they come out occasionally,.. but stay they back most of the time.

“The basic gist of the discussion was that the most important elements of a high end stereo installation are listening position and speaker positioning, in that order.  The actual hardware (speakers, amplifiers, source, cables etc) are of less importance relatively speaking.”

Cool.  All I need is Bose wave radio with it and my chair in the right spot.  
 

This is what people tell you when they want you to pay them to come to your house and setup your system for you.

rauliruegas always ends his posts with " enjoy the music not distortions." I could not agree more. Distortion is always measurable and there are usually ways to decrease these distortions... if you know what they are and what is causing them. 

If you want the best performance out of your two channel system you have to know what you are dealing with by measuring it. Throwing fancy cables and fuses at the problem praying they will work is an odd way to go about it when devices are available at a reasonable cost that allow you to understand what your system is doing and point the way to improvement. It is entirely possible to get relatively inexpensive systems performing at a very high level, higher then systems costing 10 times as much. Back in the early 80s we constructed a system around Rogers LS3 5As on stands, Levinson electronics and RH Labs subwoofers in a carefully treated room that was positively stunning. What we had was very expensive measurement gear that today with the computer power we have is a mere fraction of the expense and available to everyone.

There is some equipment that is incapable of SOTA performance but, there is a forest of inexpensive gear that is capable of performing at the highest levels if you know what you are doing with it. 

What is it exactly that we are trying to achieve?  Certainly there can be no argument that we want the lowest levels of IM distortion and noise. You want to start with the flattest frequency response ideally from 18 Hz to 20 kHz and even more importantly the response curve should look the same in both channels ideally within 1 dB of each other. This can be very tough to achieve. It generally requires a purpose designed room and the clever use of room treatment or under less ideal circumstances digital signal processing. If both channels are not doing precisely the same thing you can not expect to achieve the best imaging. Any asymmetry in the room can cause serious diversions of the response curves. I learned this the hard way. I put a window on the outside wall of my listening room thinking it would not cause too much trouble. It caused a 10 dB variation in the frequency response above 12 kHz in the right channel that caused me to burn out a high frequency balance control trying to correct it. This Summer we are removing that window and boarding it up.

The problem with being a true audiophile is that you are always thinking something could sound better. Some people throw money at the problems others throw luck and money. I prefer to throw thought and as little money as I can get away with. One more thing. Do not replace your own thinking with someone else's. Humans are way too dangerous for that. Marketing is the fine art of lying your ass off to get anybody to buy your stuff. You would be best served by blocking it out entirely.

"The problem with being a true audiophile is that you are always thinking something could sound better. Some people throw money at the problems others throw luck and money. I prefer to throw thought and as little money as I can get away with. One more thing. Do not replace your own thinking with someone else's. Humans are way too dangerous for that. Marketing is the fine art of lying your ass off to get anybody to buy your stuff. You would be best served by blocking it out entirely."

Good read-insightful post, mijostyn.

Audio as a hobby is one of the more satisfying activities, but it's also maybe the most polarizing when it comes to discussing "how it REALLY works".

I was at my neighborhood record store yesterday. The owner is 70 with some of the most interesting customer stories/collection encounters. One of his longtime regulars(retired audio retail) and a customer(audio enthusiast) started with a light  casual chat because they discovered the mutual audio obsession.

According to the record store owner, it started out as a conversation anyone could understand. It then evolved into audiospeak which he felt was getting heated because of some disagreement about "audio rules" and other things he didn't have knowledge of. He had to graciously "time out" these guys because it was starting to look bad in front of the other customers! 

To him, audiophiles  are just as strange as his Millennial/Gen Z customers.

Side note-I picked up this 1957 release. Anyone into  Jazz on LP should have this in their collection. World Pacific  was one of true "golden era" labels. Real audiophool quality that will make ANY setup sound great. The Mastersounds  are the Montgomery brothers. Being a Wes fan, I get anything associated with "the thumb." Good listen.