What Could Cause Center Image To Present Lower than Expected

antigrunge2 wrote, "Not a great fan of tilting. On most conventional speakers the tweeter is mounted on top and should be at ear height. Tilting it backwards creates issues with phase allignment if you have multiple non alligned drivers in your speakers."

Some speakers require tilting to sound right.  For example two ways with first order crossovers have a fifteen degree downward polar axial tilt and need to be tilted back fifteen degrees to project sound straight out from the enclosure.

I would very much appreciate it if someone would remind me how to properly quote excerpts from previous posts.

@kingharold 

I was obviously referring to additional tilting from the manufacturer’s instructions 

OK. This is getting to be very frustrating. The first adjustment was reducing the tilt back. Or approached level. At first, I thought I noticed a slight change in image height; however, after further listening I can't confirm this change. So, I decided to move the speakers closer together. From 7' to just under 6' apart.

This, also, did not affect the level of the image, but it did negatively affect the soundstage. It was reduced in width but maybe deeper? But the strange thing was the image was affected too. And this is where it gets strange. The first time listening after the move, the image was not as centered.  I then thought about returning the tilt to the speaker. This did not seem to do anything. I decided to try something that I had read about and closed my eyes and things kind of came together but still no change in image height. 

Lost but not defeated.

Question - in a perfect world --- should it ever appear that an instrument is coming directly from the speaker in the soundstage? Or should everything be presented in an open space? I hope this question makes sense. 

Scott

You are tilting the wrong way.  You need the speaker to tilt back more OR sit further away OR sit lower