O.C.D. Speaker placement

Okay

The level of OCD is dependant on the gear.
The less resolving gear will be more forgiving of differences in exact speaker /gear/room/electrical/vibration/conditions.

I have spent amy hours of trial and error and countless measuring sessions getting my electrostatic speakers to function at a level that I find quite pleasing.

Some speakers are much less finicky, and those are perhaps the best types of speakers for folks with OCD who can get overwhelmed with too many variables in speaker placement.

They should seek out speakers that have been reviewed to sound great just about anywhere in the room they are placed.

Speaker placement and how it interacts with the room also depends on the type of speaker you are using.

I've messed with toe in, distance from seating position and distance from side walls and distance between speakers.
Everything matters.What sounds right one day can be bettered the next with just a few inches of movement.

I've settled on the Cardas formula for placement of planar speakers for the moment.

But I still move the listening seat forward and back trying to get to the sweet spot.

I think the folks with small two way speakers who listen in the near field have the least to worry about.

Sort of like listening to headphones, the room has less effect.

We are listening to more of the room than most of us would care to believe, and adding room treatment in an uncontrolled manner can be as detrimental to the sound as adding none.

We don't live in anechoic chambers,so speakers that measure great in those instances may not sound good in a home.Sometimes those kind of of specs can be misleading.

Perhaps we need to see a speaker manufacturer make claims about his speaker sounding great in a normal room.

Then give some specs of how the speaker reacted in several different types of room sizes without any treatment other than standard furnishings.

This way one could find a room similar to their own and see if the speaker would be a fit.

This may ruffle a few feathers,but like I said perfectly flat response specs in an anechoic chamber only relates to that room, not mine.

I think speakers are the one item in a system that a person should have O.C.D. over. Speaker placement is very important and if done right delivers great results and if not the system will sound like sh...

I missed this thread but after reading through, Csontos recommendation is spot on with how my set up is. Speakers are about 10' apart, the speakers are about 9" out from the front wall and my head rests on a sofa against the back wall which makes it roughly 9" from said wall. The speakers each aim to where they fire less than a foot to either side of my skull which alleviates any beaming and allow as wide a soundstage as a recording can produce and creates a sweet spot big enough for Jabba the Hutt to enjoy.

As for the OPs OCD lament, it's just what we do to get the best out of what we have and it's really not that bad since once it's set, we forget.

All the best,
Nonoise