Today a friend was over and I showed him the setup. I explained how painstaking it was to place the speakers and let him listen for a bit. I moved one channel 2 inches to the right and reduced the others' toe in by a half inch or so and he was amazed.
It all just fell apart. For a moment I panicked, then realised it was all recorded somewhere. He said "it sounds like 2 speakers now. The drums dont sound right."
I quickly swapped the more accurate ones in at thier predetermined optimal location, lasered them up and let him listen again. (Took all of 5 minutes to reset)
His response was "holy shit! Way better. You should keep these and sell the other ones." He is a headphones guy and described the accurate setup as a "big huge sounding pair of headphones." The bass extends about 10hz lower with the more accurate pair, an easy victory.
The dilemma is these bookshelves are ending up in the basement as surrounds. So the sooner I finish the basement HT, the sooner I'm left with an inferior 2ch rig. Lol.
Now I'm tempted to move the floor standing rears out of the HT plan and have a 5.1.4 setup. But then I lose the rear surrounds.
The moral of the story is, as soon as you have options, you want to excercise them. Best to leave options off the table.
