Symmetry at the Listening Position is often given a high priority. Of course it is desireable, but very often this priority works against achieving decent flat bass response. Our ears and speakers are often at around half room height, So both receiver and source are in the primary modal null, say 70Hz. . We also sit at half width, another worst modal location, nulling at say 60Hz. Width and height are often not very different, so these modal problems are doubled down, the nulls blending together. Added to the the similar distances from floor ceiling and sides causes exacerbated SBIR. More nulls close in frequency into the stew. If we had enough space and commitment we could install deep treatments on the sides walls and ceiling. But in the new world of domestic and prosumer music making, very few actually do. The result is the Frequency Response graphs we see all the time. A big hole in the LF response in the say 60-80Hz region. Would we be better off offsetting the speaker and listening positions sideways to get away from these accumulated nulls? Stand or sit high on architects stools to get out of the vertical nulling? Offset from central, plus the distance between our ears, hopefully a deep dip on one side might be mitigated by a peak on the other. Given that Bass is mostly Mono I suggest this is probably better than the typically double whammy missing Bass caused by double nulls.
DD
my seating is an architects chair :-) and my setup is typically slight off-center - on a long wall as i can afford it, and not have my LMF / MF impacted. people with small rooms benefit from an offset subwoofer.
Sam Berkow based its asymmetric rear corners concept on this idea.