I would just like to share my experience playing with my set up last night.
After listening to music on my newish Denon AVR-2310 in surround for the past week or so, I decided to start listening to the pure direct mode.
As much fun as listening to music in surround is, I notice the difference in tonality of instruments on virtually every song. I put on Norah Jones and heard the double bass on Don't Know Why the way it should be for the first time in weeks.
Then I actually broke out some meassuring tape and meassured the distance between the front speakers and then distance from my listening position to the speakers.
I adjust the speaker distance and already an improvement!
I then started to angle the speakers in towards me and even had my wife help on a couple of occasions.
WHAT AN IMPROVEMENT!!!
The revelation was U2's I Still haven't found...
The opening guitar picking was flying around as if i was listening to a surround system and Bono's voice seemed to becoming out of the wall in between the speakers. An accoustic guitar I barely noticed before seemed to becoming out of the centre speakers - only it wasn't (of course) as I was using the pure direct mode, so only the fron speakers were working.
Stereo - what a discovery!
The bass drum was somewhere inbetween the right speaker and the centre and i could almost imagine the drummer infront of me.
Wonderful wonderful stuff! After several hours of listening list night and this morning with Norah Jones, John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Bad Co, Mother Earth and others... I can almost not listen to music on my Denon in any other mode anymore.
Don't get me wrong, the Audyssey mode in Bypass L/R EQ is still fun and i feel like I'm swimming in sound, but now that my speakers are at the right distance and toed in, I get almost the same effect, but with much more accurate tonality of the instruments and much, much better (not sure if it's the correct term) stereo imaging.
I'm a very happy boy today....