“Klaus has the Liquid speakers pulled well out into the room and forms an equilateral triangle with the listening seat. Then I believe he nudges the seat forward towards the speakers so it's at 90% of the distance between the two speakers. This creates a vast, deep soundstage and takes out most of the room reflections.”
It's easy enough to duplicate this configuration with literally any pair of speakers on hand and end up with a fantastic sounding reproduction because you hear mostly reflected (room) sound and minimal direct sound from the speakers. It's a trick that just happens to work out favorably even if it can be considered as a form of coloration since everything heard has that same soundstage and ambience no matter the recording quality.
That begs the question, should obviously bad recordings sound bad on a premium system? If you can, have him play a known good 60s,vinyl, mono, jazz recording. If rather than sounding very good it turns out to be absolutely stunning then given the lack of resolution, modern recording equipment and multichannel reproduction in this case something is very wrong about what it is that should be the direction of pursuit in this business.
This extreme off-axis, nearfield listening position presents problems with the slightest movements from the exact center LP since at say 5 or 6 ft from the speaker moving your head 1 ft laterally changes the level between the left and right speakers by 3db vs a reasonable 1db change at 15 ft. This is an annoyance I can't put up with unless you actually like the head-in-a-vise approach.
Also, from equilateral, it's more like 80% than 90%. I move from 9 ft to 7 ft forward to imitate that vast soundstage you describe as having something to do with the speakers. There is no increase in depth, as a matter of fact, in this position there is a reduction in that fake depth perception and a more uniform transition of instrument location across the soundstage by hearing still even less direct sound (making the speakers 'disappear') or at least further equalizing the ambient and direct sound so that you can't 'see' where the sound is coming from.
The sound is far more diffuse than seems right being a trade off between the pinpoint imaging, tiny instrument sound vs the hard to localize but still coherent life sized instrument (vast soundstage, as you say) sound you get with this setup.
My problem with this configuration is that no matter how attractive the impression it is a distraction from appreciating the correct timbre and harmonic structure of instruments if the recording allows. I think this setup is flawed for the very same reasons it seems to be good.
I could be wrong, though. This critical listening stuff is mostly way too complicated and confusing to me.
