Vote

I have spent many hours setting up my speakers in my room. I am still doing very slight adjustments. As I learn more about what music should sould sound like. I am still getting better music out of my system just by changing sometimes ever so slightly.

Over hundreds of hours, and over the years, tens of thousands of hours. No replacement for experimentation.

I will make 4 to 10 adjustments over the first month until I feel the sound is right. Once I do that, I am usually set until the speakers change.

Ten Hours. Yup I'm a little picky and have a hard room to set-up, too. So it took some time to get it just right and even now, they could be moved. MA PL300s

one hour...I don't have a lot of space to play with, so it is a constant compromise between ideal listening environment...and having a livable space.

2 years before they hit the spot

My best guess is more than 12 hours cumulatively moving back and forth, adjusting toe-in, measuring distance between them and to the listening position. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Perhaps, but they now sound pretty darn good.

My main system is geared towards absolute accuracy (because I am an audiophile) at soul-crushing volumes (because I am a teenager)...as such I have stacked Bowers and Wilkins floorstanders and AR Hi-res AR5's with built-in 10" 175 watt subs running as dedicated LR subs along with a 12" adding some power...this is ran by a preamp with 2 subwoofer outs running to a amp powering one set of B&W's which then passes through to another amp and then another to bi-amp the other B&Ws...to completely balance the freq. range I spent weeks damping my room, adjusting the tone controls (needed for the complexity of the situation...I have my Pop Pulse T-amp running my AR minimonitors for the purist "musical" jazz/chamber sound)and yes, moving my speakers around in my bedroom...over and over again, finding a balance...I think what I am trying to say is that one must balance a variety of factors...If you choose to not only buy a elaborate system but make it sound amazing, you must be prepared to spend hour after hour optimizing it...I estimate I spent an average of 2 hours a day for 2 and a half weeks tweaking everything, bringing over my friends who play various instruments to compare specific sounds from uncompressed and lossless recordings of concerts they themselves not only attended but understand virtually every musical detail of...after around 30-35 hours of tweaking I have a pretty much completely flat response from the mid 30s to 20+khz.. In the end I had a friend of mine who owns DT Mythos Supertowers with new Rotel amplification listen to my 1550$ setup and his well over 4k system...and the lowest line of B&Ws singlehandedly destroyed the mythos, both in the most extreme dynamic passages and the most delicate...the soundstage was superior...it imaged so well...and despite the 550+ lb weight of the system it was so delicate.... Perhaps I have rambled a bit much, but essentially if you want to make (most) systems sound their best, you must spend at least a few hours trying different positions, I did, and made my teenager summer job money into something that has beat out anything I have heard so far...for any price.

5 to 10 mimutes