The fact is, what he is saying in his assessment is nothing new. The actual THX parameters that they touted for years said the same thing. Also, for many years, the gurus at "Widescreen Review" emphasized this idea back in the day especially during the introduction of 5.1 DD and DTS soundtracks in the early nineties and carried the idea even further. I believe Andrew would probably remember the large flagship Mirage bipolar speakers that Widescreen Review had set up in their review listening room, these speakers were positioned in ALL the channels, not just L/C/R.
Of course, much of this is impractical, including many of Smith's ideas because of space and that is why horizontal centres were developed. Certainly they are a compromise but once you integrate a large full range centre channel in to your set-up(VP160, 180)they negate a lot of the issues he seems to be concerned about. As we all know, even if they are exactly the same model, just moving speakers in to different positions will change their tonality, the acoustics of the room will ultimately be the arbiter of that.
Unless we are dealing in virtual reality, if one has an HT room set-up and you have a movie night where several people are over to watch a movie, apologies to Jim Smith, but, it just not possible to have everyone sitting in the "sweet spot" at the same time. Full fledged professional movie theatres can't even do that.
