How far apart do you position your speakers ?

After reading all of the responses, I wanted to share my experience. I have a room that is 12 feet by 23 feet and i have the speakers on the short side of the room.The speakers come out 56 inches from the wall behind them and I have about 8 feet behind my listening chair. Because I only have 12 feet, I found that when I had the speakers spread to far apart, the sound suffered in terms of the most natural bass sound. I ended up settling for the speakers to be just over 6.5 feet apart with very little toe in. As I said, when i went any closer to the side walls, I did not like the sound of the bass. I sit 9.75 feet away from the speakers. This works well in my room. Every room is a bit different and you have to play around to get the best listening spot. Most rooms have issues but if you let your ears tell you what sounds right, you can usually get a good listening situation. You have to experiment and most of us have rooms that are less than perfect. Room treatments can help. Another factor is whether your spouse or you is comfortable having speakers come out in the room. As I stated mine come out 56 into the room, my dog Hanna does not object but not every spouse feels that way and there may have to be compromises.

Obviate: To anticipate and dispose of effectively; render unnecessary.

Now that we've cleared THAT up...Pettyfeveresk: I am concerned that your spouse is named "my dog Hanna"

My listening room has furniture, book cases, paintings, a glass wall, moose head (not really), a high sloping ceiling, and no formulaic solution. So I merely listen...combfilteringstandingwaves be damned! Also..."off axis" is extremely taste and speaker design driven and again, no formula, especially if you're face is over 6 feet away from the tweeter, and rooms generally do NOT have a specific "frequency curve" except what can maybe be measured in one spot, and that has zero to do with music (soundstage specifically) unless you listen with your face stuck to the window or you hang from the ceiling fan and measured those places. I've used a few vastly different speakers in that room...all requiring COMPLETELY different positioning to get to a sweet spot.

Here's my formula, try it if you get curious or bored:

Speakers 1/3 into the room
Chair against the back wall (make sure the wall behind you is not hard/bare)
Speakers spread 83% of the distance from your ear to the plane of the speakers directly in front of you
Toe in to taste, I suppose this will have a lot to do with speaker design

My room is 13' front to back, 12' side to side.
My speakers are a little over 4' into the room and are about 68" apart center of driver to center of driver.

I went to a shop in another city a while ago and the owner suggested the 1/3 into the room and chair against the back wall. It went against what I believed, but I got curious and bored at the same time so I tried it.
I got the 83% thing from this thread and it actually worked pretty darn well.
It may be that my room is small, a cube, or whatever but this is where I have my speakers.

Is it that the distance between the speakers is 83% of the distance from the speaker to ear or plane of the speakers in front of you to ear? There is a difference.

I did the plane of the speaker to the ear, but I believe the 83% mentioned in this thread was from ear to speaker.
The way I did it worked well for me. I have my rack on the side wall, so moving speakers farther apart would have meant closer to the gear.

I find that a listening distance of 1.5 times the spacing between speakers works best.

If you listen at 6 feet then speakers spaced 4 feet, at 9 feet spaced 6 feet apart, and at 12 feet spaced 8 feet.

I find the often recommended equilateral triangle with toe in does not sound as realistic.

I prefer speakers facing forwards and square to the room - no toe in or toe out.

I do not respect speakers that change their sound character with angle.

I will only use speakers with even dispersion across the main frequency range.

As far as they need to be.

Not all loudspeakers are designed for facing forwards most are designed with toe in in mind. The reason is the frequency response on and off axis. There is no rule that could ever tell me where to place a loudspeaker or how far apart. To many variables. So best to set them up to sound best to the owner weather placements right or wrong is subjective and even ones height or chair height, room decor, seating distance ,room and speaker size, speakers radiation pasterns etc. all can effect placement. No one way for all loudspeakers and the formulas to me are all far to over simplified and biased to have any real use.

I think Johnk just said it all. There are plenty of formula's, get one to work

I can't believe Sebrof was the first to mention toe in.

Badly written speaker manuals for the last 30 years or so have often referenced the "hole in the middle" of the stereo image when speakers get pushed too far apart.

Greater degrees of toe in will increase the distance where this first occurs, but may also change the tonal balance of the speaker.

I have also found that there is not necessarily a point of apples to apples equilibrium with greater toe in and greater distance vs lesser toe in and lesser distance.

Although there may be a relationship with respect to where the hole in the middle begins, the two different set ups can create a completely different sound and image.

Planars behave differently from other speakers, but after years of experimenting with different models, I found that setting up Magnepans with no toe in often created the widest and most expansive image, while also softening the treble a bit.

In summary, there is no simple formula or easy answer to this question and every inch counts, although is it usually a safe bet that farther out from both rear and side walls is a good thing.

I meant "your" and not "you're".