Speakers too wide apart?

What you have done by placing the speakers further from side walls is to cut down on early reflections form the mid and treble - it allows your brain to process the primary signal before the reflections arrive - you hear more detail rather than a cluttered claustrophobic sound

He is also decreasing bass loading as well. If they were too close to the walls before, he was likely overloading the bass and getting heavy resonance in certain frequencies. This would muddy up the imaging, making it harder to hear some of the other frequencies and consequently affect the precision of localization. A person can correct for the reflection issues that close wall placement causes fairly easily with good absorption material, but you can't easily deal with the bass loading problem...

Also, he might have been suffering from imaging of instruments and vocals that are out of proportion if the speakers were too far apart.

Back in the early 90's Monster Cable had a acoustic device that extended from the middle of the wall behind and between the speakers extending out like a probiscus toward the listener. This device was said to increase the stereophonic effect by decreasing crosstalk between the speakers. The acoustic wavefront pressure would be reduced at the lisenting position much like the ill effects caused by a ninty degree soffitt resulting in gross amounts of phase shift and frequency cancelation. Tom

Shadorne, reading your posts about speaker placement, and then looking at the speaker placement in your personal system where they are built directly into a wall unit, makes me wonder if you follow your own placement rules?

Good question. For side walls I am 4 feet away - which is a fairly safe distance. However speakers built into wall is pretty unusual. Let me explain.

Here is a link that explains what it going on with Soffit Mounting Speakers.

If you move speakers far enough away from the wall behind them then you will reduce slightly the severity of the "comb filter" response dips in the bass and lower mid. (This is why I always suggest 6 feet or more for normal home setups)

Alternatively - what I have done - is to place speakers entirely into the wall and totally eliminate the "frequency response dips" altogether and an approach that ALSO eliminates speaker baffle edge diffraction issues entirely too.

You will see that I have treated the wall behind the listening position with plenty of absorption - log fireplace and GIK traps - this is because soffit mounting gives a strong completely coherent bass and tends to uniformly excite all room modes (so it is not without its own issues/quirks).

If I did not have soffit mount then my preference would be to move the speakers out into the room at least 6 feet - which is what I generally recommend to others with more normal setups.

Here is a link which shows what I loosely based my design on The Mastering Lab. Same speakers. Similar two-thirds height speaker wall. Only my sub is not soffit mounted. You may not have ever heard of Doug Sax/Mastering Lab but you probably have heard of Sheffield Labs Direct to Disc (this is Doug) and if you have an extensive CD/SACD collection of your favorite high audio quality music then Doug Sax has probably mastered a good portion of them. (Just to say that in wall speaker mounting is not completely crazy/without merit - btw I would not recommend you plop any old speakers behind drywall - that will not work at all - a lot of thick MDF and heavy bracing as well as fibreglass absorption went into what I had built - concrete would have probably been better!)

Thanks

Some years ago when I sold Dunlavy speakers. The man himself told me that he was at work on a set of inwall SC4's. He also said they measured better than their boxed brothers. He said the only thing any two rooms have in common are that they have walls, and because of this fact he could better predict the final outcome.
James Louspeakers have many different inwalls enclosed in aircraft aluminum enclosures, some with 2 drivers and some 7ft tall with multiple drivers. These were very impressive at the CEDIA trade shows. Tom