Speaker set up for more than 1 person

I'm not prepared to change speakers for my occasional listening meet-ups !!

@maprik ,

A couple of us are meeting at each other's place soon. The way we are going to do the sessions are - have 2 more chairs and switch the places with the center sweet spot.

Reasoning:

365 Days = 100%, Listen together Days = 5 (just a number), which is 1.4%.

Is it really worth "getting a sofa/love seat/change speaker positions/etc" for such a small % number? You call.

There's only one sweet spot. Share it. Depending on your speakers, you may be able to toe in a lot and have great imaging and soundstage at the sweet spot while providing a decent listening experience to someone sitting on either side of the sweet spot. 

You have to change the toe-in, there is no single arrangement 'great' for either centered or slightly off center.

It’s very doable if you are able to easily alter Toe-In for DBX Crossfield Setup when you have a guest. 

excerpt from here

"DBX Cross Dispersion Method (developed for home theater front speakers):

unique shape/angle of dispersion/multiple tweeters: set up once.  

speaker your side: closer thus more volume, but, direct dispersion from opposite side speaker increases it’s volume, i.e. a trade-off creating wide imaging. Note: their speakers were designed to provide this without altering their toe-in"

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note: Either way, aimed at center best for single, or DBX aimed opposite side for two listeners sounds terrific from center, it’s just not as wide a soundstage if you leave them in DBX Crossfield and sit in the middle.

@yyzsantabarbara 

I think coincident drivers tend to have a slightly bigger sweet spot, with the Blade being very special in this regard

Completely agree with you except that I would change slightly to hugely!  For decades I used Quad Electrostatic loudspeakers (ESL-63 and ESL 2905) which emulate a point source of sound about a foot behind the flat panel.  The soundstage, imaging and sweetspot are huge.  I recently added KEF Reference 1 speakers (more reliable) and they have much the same characteristic.

With speakers like these you can stand up and walk around a holographic-like soundstage.  The comparison with conventional multi-drive speakers is astounding - no need to use a vice to lock your head into a narrow horizontal plane and precise distances from each speaker.

The physics is to do with cancellation and reinforcement where separate drivers and their reflections interfere with each other.  The ear/brain system quite quickly adjusts to the 'cleanliness' of apparent point sources and their coherence.  The corollary is that going back to conventional speakers is difficult.

When auditioning speakers I always move around a lot!