The closer you put them the more dramatic the effect. Within a couple of feet to the sides should do. You are kind of simulating a first reflection point when you do this so think of angles to your mlp.
That worked surprisingly well. The two panels need to be *exactly* the same distance/angle from the speakers or it doesn't work, and I had to remove/hide most of the other treatments to prevent the sound from being too "dead" (including raising the cellular blind on the nearby side window), but the difference is significant:
- imaging is a bit tighter, but it was pretty good before... the big change is not so much with the main sound sources but the "background" sound (presumably echoes etc... both on the original recording and from the room) is much more consistent
- the "background" improvement seems to be enough to help with perceived realism of instruments, to the point where the brain conjures up a real instrument much more frequently than before (I'm not describing this well, but it's like you can almost see the instrument in front of you)
- phase-shifting sound effects where the background seems to swirl around are much more prominent (this is one thing current room/equipment had been missing)
- I finally found the point where even I think "that's too damn ugly for the living room"
For a while i was following the MDAC thread on Pinkfish until it just overflowed my mind on info/gobbletygook. Now I just realize that my hearing it just too shot to really appreciate what the audiophiles do.
You used two words I had not heard before - MDAC and Pinkfish - so I had to go look them up
There certainly is a point of diminishing returns and I feel like I'm getting fairly close to that point myself (at least until I listen to LFR's) but the good news so far is that while my hearing is probably equally shot (or worse) I am still finding that I can recreate most of the aspects I really liked about the better sound systems from 35-40 years ago.
Fortunately I never made it into serious audiophile territory back then (other than hanging out in the $100K system listening rooms until the salesmen asked me to leave) so hoping I won't have to go there now either.
AFAICS the limiting factor in my listening environment is now the big cushy arms on my listening chair. If I lean back in the chair the imaging is really blurred, but perching on the front edge of the seat brings it all back. Even after all these years I'm still being surprised by how much difference the environment makes.
