severe limiting factor

Thanks for the responses so far.

I should first say that what I mean by no SS or imaging is that I hear the music coming from the speakers.. not in front of them, behind them, or to their sides. it appears to come right from the wood boxes that are sitting on the floor.

The room is 10' x 17' and I sit about 12' from the 10' wall and about 9' from the speakers. right now the speakers are almost perfectly centered along the 10' wall. they are 6' appart (center to center). The left one is about 2.5' from the side wall, and the right one is about 1.5' from the side wall. Thiel recommends more distance between the speakers and the side walls, but if that's impossible, they want you to toe them in. They are toed in now so that when i'm sitting in my position i can only see the front side of them. they're looking at me straight on. i did this because along the 17' wall between the speakers and my listening position there is a desk on one side and a hutch on the other side. if they were aimed more straight ahead they would be aimed at these objects. also, there is 2.5' from the rear wall to the back side of the speakers.

before today, the speakers were slightly closer together. In their current position (as described above) i think i might have lost some of the "music coming from the boxes" effect, but the change was very slight.

I have a feeling that this room is probably too small, but i didn't build the system for this room. for now, though, i would like to get the most out of it.

thanks again!
kevin

ok, i'm back :)

i've been holding off on posting, but i'm sure appreciating all the info that's been presented here.

the reason i havn't looked into the phasing issue yet is that i ordered some spade connectors that just came yesterday. i should get around to putting them on in a few days, which is when i'll check for any phasing problems. thiels are a pain with the posts are under the speakers, so the fewer number of times i have to lay them down the better!

after i put the spades on i'll mess with placement some more, then i'm going to move the system into a room thats about twice as big to see what happens.

can anyone recommend some really good jazz recordings that give a nice soundstage and imaging (preferably live recordings)? i'm sure i can search the archives for some, but i'de like to listen to something that some of you might know so i can check back and let you know how it sounds.

thanks again for all the good info!

i've been playing around and currently have some fine acoustic treatments (bath towels) hanging on the walls. this seemed to help "clean up" the music. after that, i put the speakers 6' apart, which puts them very close to the side walls, and toed them in severely as newbee recommended. they are crossing axis approximately 2 feet in front of me. i'm sitting 7.5 feet from the speakers.

so far this is the best set up for this room. finally i'm starting to get the feeling that the sound is not coming directly from the speakers. before, when the speakers were not toed in as hard but were aimed directly at me, i merely heard different instruments coming from either speaker. it was a lame attempt at imaging which didn't seem very convincing.

i'm still not exactly happy with the system and hope it can do a lot better. the true test will be when i move everything into the bigger room. hopefully i'll get around to it this weekend.