If I had a room like FJN04's, you could not machine gun the smile off of my face. My tiny dedicated listening room is 10x14 (with a 10 foot high cathedral ceiling). My room blows. Speakers go on the long wall, about 6.5 to 7 feet apart. They are pulled out from the rear wall about 2 feet. This puts my ears just a few inches shy of 8 feet from the fronts of my drivers....and that is with my back against the wall. Short of mini-monitors easily doing their thing in there, it has been a long road getting a variety of somewhat larger speakers to sound good in such a small room. Giving the speakers 3 to 4 feet on either side has always yielded better results...for me.
I have tried putting speakers on the short wall, but without exception, I find that speakers need more breathing room on the sidewalls than they do from the rear wall. Sure, sitting further away gives more time for the drivers to more wholly integrate (nearfield listening tends to slightly accentuate the higher frequencies, depending on the speaker's design) but flubby bass echo/boom from close sidewalls is the worst thing that can ever happen to your hi-fi experience.
I would take sidewall breathing room (and nearfield listening) any day of the week over the bass boom that has plagued my setup whenever speakers were placed on the 10 foot shortwall.
FJN04, what exactly is stopping you from at least experimenting with a new layout? Instead of moving every last front-end component and the big Hoodoo, why dont you just throw your linestage down there between your monoblocks (with a shorter interconnect), hook up a CD player to it (also on the floor), and see what happens. I gurantee that with the Hoodoo and a turntable on top of it, you will hear a diminished soundstage between the speakers, so dont go to all the trouble of moving those things just yet. Start by simply moving the pre-amp and the CD player over there first. At the very least, you'll get to hear what a front end component sounds like without a 25 foot long interconnect running between the amps and pre-amp, and you'll also get to hear your speakers from a completely different perspective.
Hopefully, you'll hear no difference, and just keep your present setup. As described, it sounds very convenient.
Good luck,
Jake
I have tried putting speakers on the short wall, but without exception, I find that speakers need more breathing room on the sidewalls than they do from the rear wall. Sure, sitting further away gives more time for the drivers to more wholly integrate (nearfield listening tends to slightly accentuate the higher frequencies, depending on the speaker's design) but flubby bass echo/boom from close sidewalls is the worst thing that can ever happen to your hi-fi experience.
I would take sidewall breathing room (and nearfield listening) any day of the week over the bass boom that has plagued my setup whenever speakers were placed on the 10 foot shortwall.
FJN04, what exactly is stopping you from at least experimenting with a new layout? Instead of moving every last front-end component and the big Hoodoo, why dont you just throw your linestage down there between your monoblocks (with a shorter interconnect), hook up a CD player to it (also on the floor), and see what happens. I gurantee that with the Hoodoo and a turntable on top of it, you will hear a diminished soundstage between the speakers, so dont go to all the trouble of moving those things just yet. Start by simply moving the pre-amp and the CD player over there first. At the very least, you'll get to hear what a front end component sounds like without a 25 foot long interconnect running between the amps and pre-amp, and you'll also get to hear your speakers from a completely different perspective.
Hopefully, you'll hear no difference, and just keep your present setup. As described, it sounds very convenient.
Good luck,
Jake