Listening position/speaker position

I also had a friend who is in the stereo retail business come by to listen to my system [Maggie 3.7's, Hegel int.]  After 10 minutes he said 'try this for a while'' and moved the speakers another 20 inches apart.  I left them there for a week and then moved them back.  Experimentation allows learning is what I found.

My room is nearly the same exact size as yours. I am limited regarding speaker and listening position but I’ve played around with these and my speakers are about 3’ from the wall, 7’ apart with the listening position about 7’ from the speakers (an equilateral triangle). I have room treatments that tamed bass. The sound it very good and still gives me goose bumps from time to time. 

Not to hijack Willht thread, but I need some advice as well. I see all of the recommendations, and they are for box speakers. My question is how do these change (if at all) for open baffle speakers? I am finishing a listening room that will be 20L x 15W x 8H, and will mostly be using Clayton Shaw Caladan speakers.....not too far off of the Cardas recommendations, but this is as close as I can get.

++ for recommendations of Jim Smith's book; "Get Better Sound"  even better yet call Jim!  For a modest amount he will spend 30min with you.  You send him dimensions, pictures and a list of your equipment and he'll offer up his expertise on optimization.

Straight talk with Jim

Either your friend is none too bright when it comes to speaker placement or he is pulling your leg. Take your pick. Good advice above - I don't need to repeat.

However, your comment about having lots of cushy furniture is something I can identify with. I have a room a little bigger than yours and I have lots of furniture in the room including book cases, CD cases, chair, couch, desk, and other stuff but no room treatment. The room is somewhat live and it sounds really good. Punchy and dynamic with excellent imaging.

I realize that this doesn't exactly relate to your question but one of the best tools/skills you can use is the slap echo test. Clap your hands and listen for the echo and decay. Do this around your room and then try it in different rooms in your house. As you gain experience you can use this test to get a good feel for how a room sounds. If the sound you hear is a clearly defined echo with a fairly long decay then that indicates you will have a problem. If the sound is dead without hardly any decay, your system will sound lifeless. You want to hear a smooth decay without a clear slap echo. Once you get proficient with this go over to your buddy's house, clap your hands while moving about the room, and then tell him to move his listening chair 2" one direction, his rug 6" in another direction, and change the toe in by 8 degrees. 😁

My point here is that if you start moving stuff around or adding or deleting furniture there is a simple way to get a sense of what is going on with the room. It won't tell you where the bass nodes are but it's a good tool for managing absorption and diffusion. When you hear a different system it can also provide good information about why it sounds the way it does.