I recently moved my equipment to a smaller room to acheive the volume I desired out of my new SE34I.3.  Worked well and I am getting plenty of volume.  It also is a room the rest of the family does not use so I don't have to worry about kids running into speakers, etc.

The speakers are out about 40 inches or so, and the soundstage is pretty deep.  But also, I have a door mid way between the speakers that opens into another room (a little used room).

Because at Zenfest Steve had a doorway built in to one end of his listening room, I figured this was done on purpose and opened the door in my listening room.  Wow.  The result was a huge increase in depth of soundstage.

If fact, it was so deep that it had a little bit of a tunnel effect which left me wondering if the reason Steve has the wide opening in his room is to provide a wider "pipe" and not get depth of soundstage "width" compression.

I don't understand what the sound waves are doing to produce this effect, but thought I would toss out my experience to see if anyone else has experienced it and/or understands what is going on.

I once had speakers on either side of a big old-fashioned (i.e. brick and mortar, and wide and deep) fireplace.  It sounded as if the performers were in the fireplace.  Sort of disconcerting....