For Magnepans try the "Rooze" comfiguration

Well I'm both pleased and relieved that it's working so well for others.
Rooze rhymes with ruse and also my last name, so just a little play on words to keep people guessing.
But this is not a joke, it's a very serious re-alignment of listening priorities. The 'new' setup does not fare well under the typical audiophile scrutiny that we typically apply to any new tweak, component or parameter change. It has some deficiencies when we start to think about the usual audiophile checks and balances, but if we're just interested in enjoying music then the presentation is hard to beat.
I won't get into the specifics, since I'd just be repeating myself, but anyone with the time and inclination should give this a try. I haven't had much time to optimize speaker/chair position for the new setup, so I suspect there is a lot more performance to be had from the idea.

I wasn't aware of the Bose 901 principal of operation before trying this, but from what I've learned since, doesn't the Bose method have drivers firing into the front wall (behind the speaker), and drivers firing at the listener? That would tell me that there are the usual issues with transparency, since there are still direct-firing drivers, and also an issue with time-alignment, since the distance from the rear-firing drivers to the front wall is a variable. Again, I know very little about the Bose method so I may have this completely wrong.

All I can say about the 'maggie method' is that there are no direct firing drivers, all the sound is reflected. One would expect the sound to be diffuse, but it isn't. One would expect room influences and reflections to be more influential, but they are not. You hear significantly less of the room affecting the sound negatively.

Well, I'm not trying to sell you anything other than a dose of madness, and even that is free if you call with your credit card in the next 24 hours.

Rooze.

El,

I'm not sure that the 9' is key. Remember that I'm not listening to the rear wave, I'm looking between the speakers and listening to a soundstage that is formed against the wall that the front of the speakers are firing into. The 9' dimension is not critical. What is critical is that the space behind the speaker has sufficient room for a seat, with at least 5' between the seat and the back of the speaker. So 6' or 7' is important to make this work, but not necessarily 9'. More would be better I think, and I may experiment with taking the speakers out into the room.
As you mentioned, I'm not going to win any 'best home decor' competition, but who cares what the house looks like so long as the music rocks!!

Eldartford,

This isn't the case, and I see the confusion.

The room is a few inches short of 28' wide. The speakers are 9' from the wall behind them, so they're firing across 19' onto the wall opposite. I'm sitting behind the speaker, looking through the speaker at the opposite wall which is approx. 25' away. I'm looking at the rear of the speaker, which is just around 5' away from me. Common sense suggests that the sound I hear will be from the rear of the speaker, just a few feet away. But this isn't how it works. The speakers appear not to have any sound coming from them at all. The soundstage forms on the wall which is 25' away from me. The depth of the stage is somewhere around 10-12'.
I will try to sketch out this arrangement tomorrow, but there is a sketch on the asylum that details what I am talking about quite well.
To describe this in words makes little sense, you have to hear it for yourself.

Rooze

Folks,
Below is a link to a sketch of the arrangement.
Again, looking at the sketch one would expect the sound to emerge from the rear of the speaker. If you position yourself carefully in both a lateral and longitudinal direction, the sound vanishes from the rear of the speaker and the stage forms against the wall at the opposite end of the room. It's a weird effect that takes a second or two to register. Eldartford, in many ways it sounds like the monaural affect that you mentioned, but mostly because the sound 'hangs in a space' against the back wall and does not appear to have a source.
The soundstage has all of the aspects of a 'normal' stereo soundstage, without the speakers! It has incredible depth, width and height - in a natural unbloated sense. It has accurate image placement, though not as tightly rendered as with the conventional setup. What makes it so out of the ordinary is the apparant absence of normal room anomalies such as bass boominess or slap echo. It sounds transparent and natural - musical, to put it another way.

Of course, the whole arrangement is not 'optimized' for this presentation. The only thing being moved from the conventional setup is the chair. I suspect that if one were able to optimize fully, without constraints on speaker/chair positions, then the sound could be amazing.

Here goes http://www.newaudiosociety.com/new-seat.jpg