Adjusting speaker positioning. What, if anything, to expect?



I am going to adjust my Magico A3’s positioning a little bit to try to optimize their performance and the listening experience. Due to the logistics of the room they’re in, there’s only a limited amount I can move them. I’ll describe the room and what I can do within those limitations. I’m wondering what improvement I might be able to achieve with adjusting positioning.

The room is approximately 14’ x 22’. There is a high vaulted ceiling. about 15’ at it’s peak centered in the room on its horizontal axis. Picture how kindergarten child draws a house. That’s the shape of a cross section of the room and vaulted ceiling.. The speakers are located about 8’ apart centered on the long wall. The front of the A3’s are only out 22" from the wall, the rear of the speakers only 9" from the wall. That can’t be helped. The prime listening position is on a couch about 10’ out from and facing the same wall, also centered. The components are on shelves centered and built into the same long wall the speakers are on. There are some other furnishings, and books above built-in cabinets, line most of the other three walls.

I can move the speakers about a foot farther apart or closer together, and I can change their toe-in. What changes, if any, might I be expecting or hope to achieve moving the speakers within these limited parameters? Could the sound-stage be affected? I’m not sure what the sound-stage should be like anyway. Should it extend to the left or right outside the speakers, or be mainly between the speakers? Right now depending on the recording the vocals and instruments are usually between or no further apart than the actual speakers. Could the treble, midrange, or bass response be augmented or diminished depending on positioning? Are there any other factors that may be affected by positioning alone? Thank you for any guidance and please feel free to ask any questions. Thanks,

Mike
skyscraper
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If you’re gonna read a book then Robert Harley’s Complete Guide to High End Audio is a far better place to start. Its not that the other one is bad, its just I find understanding concepts works a whole lot better in the long run than memorizing platitudes. The difference is my way you can actually build a music system and not just type word salad.

Like fibbo. Yeah Fibonacci, you looked it up. Did you find anything useful? Did the word salad typer have anything useful to say? No. Word salad. 

Let me explain why it matters, so you will understand, and be better able to position speakers and do all the other stuff that matters.

Sound travels in waves of different wavelengths. Which in a room is a problem, because sound keeps hitting the walls and bouncing back. Which if this happens with short frequencies like treble no problem we can disperse it or absorb it pretty easy. Because the wavelengths are short the stuff that will diffuse or absorb can be small. No problem.

Lower down though, the wavelength can be longer than the room. The wave hits the wall, bounces back, reinforces itself. You get what is called a room mode. Where this happens the bass will be really loud. But it can also cancel. Where this happens the bass can be almost totally cancelled to nothing.

Got it? So far we’re just talking like its one way. But its three ways- length, width, and height. So what’s the worst room? A cube. 12x12x12 or whatever. Doesn’t matter. 20x20x20. Whatever. All those duplicate dimensions result in the same mode and the same null and the only thing different is the frequency.

Knowing the physics you can sit down with a piece of paper and map or graph out the various length, width, and height room modes for any given room. Then plot them out and see. And oh, guess what? There’s actually a chapter in Harley’s book on this.

So anyway, you do this enough times for enough rooms and eventually some smart alek says hey the room with the smoothest most spread out modes follows this fibonacci sequence where the dimensions are fibonacci ratios of each other. Only nobody ever gonna build a room like that, because its like fractions of an inch difference, you just want to avoid stuff like 8x16x24 which you would know because I just explained and now you know all those are multiples of each other.

You see, I hope, the difference between information and word salad?
This is a very interesting and informative discussion! I wish that  - like some other forums - the moderators could "flag" key exchanges so they can be easily found and consulted for future reference (but maybe they have done that already: if so, flag this one, please)
Actually we do build rooms and speaker boxes exactly like that, to the Fibbo sequence, and since RH book is beginner math, we rely on stuff like Olson, Harry F - Elements of Acoustical Engineering. we use the Fibbo sequence, when  rarely we have to use parallel surfaces. Harley excellent book should also be in the word salad Arsenal.

And only a massive ego would approach Jim’s great book as unworthy of a great tidbit or three, or a know it all....