Hi Harry. If you own a pair of BL5s then why don’t you simply try it. If you can’t hear a difference or don’t prefer the sound then you’ll have your answer.

When I sold mine, I installed and started a calibration at the buyer’s room.

The process failed several times. Not a pleasant feeling right now, you bet!

Then I changed the orientation (toe-in) of one of the BL5s and the calibration was successful.

As stated, Try it. what we say has no bearing on what you hear and prefer.

When I owned the bL5, I always toed-in. My postulation was to a) point the BL5's at my favourite position (aesthetics and direct travel of upper register of sound) and b) I thought that any reflections would be delayed further and that with one open-side on one speaker and a wall-window with the other.

Whether that is fact or fiction I don't know. I also don't recall any major sound change by either toeing in or not in that setup.

Don't beat yourself up - especially on what all the "experts" say.

Whenever I set up any loudspeaker configuration correctly, they all point to the listening position. On-axis is directly in front of the loudspeaker, regardless of its directivity.

If you do anything else, it's either for the convenience of the mounting (e.g. surround loudspeakers mounted on a wall) or for your eyes.

Cheers
-geoff 

 

Wow… a reply from Geoff. Thank you so much. 🤩  I know your pretty active on Beoworld but didn’t think you’d respond to me. #fanboi 🤣

I have now toed the speakers in. Maybe the imaging is a little more focused. I’ve not done blind A/B tests so 🤷‍♂️  It’s defiantly not worse and it hasn’t narrowed the width and on the right recordings somehow the image extends well beyond the speakers.

Something I’ve noticed that wasn’t as apparent when I was working with B&O is the depth in the image and the layers that extend beyond the speakers. (Or perhaps I’d just forgotten) Maybe because I have the luxury of having the speakers half a meter from the wall behind them. We didn’t have the space in the showroom to accommodate that.  

I think if B&O tooled up the stores to easily move Beolab 5’s for home demos many more would have been sold.