Equipment Rack Between Speakers...Good or Bad

I find having the speakers out further in the room typically makes more of a difference than a rack centered between the speakers.  For me I typically have the equipment rack near the wall and the speakers 3-4 ' out from the wall, but I have had to have the speaker close to the wall and have messed with a vertical rack between and then offsetting the rack on a side wall.  I didn't hear much of a difference.

I do feel removing a TV is a different story.   Placing a TV between speakers is less than ideal.  I think it is best to mount the TV on the wall and again, pull the speakers out giving them air to breath without immediate  interruption.

I’ve become obsessed with trying to make my smaller/square ~13 x 13-ish room sound bigger and better.  Installed bass traps, and diffusion/absorbers on side walls and rear walls. All have help tame bass, balance things out, improve decay, and liven up the room some.  My next step was to experiment with moving my rack from the center of the speakers over to the sidewall.  Even with a cheap $20 Amazon 7m balanced cable run (displacing my Anticable preamp to amp connection) the soundstage improvement was immediately noticeable.  Beck is now standing 6’ in front of me - I was shocked how much of an improvement there was.  Why didn’t I do this sooner?  For those of you already curious, esp if you have a smaller rooms, I highly recommend giving it a try if you can.

If your system is a lot of work to move and be set up for a while I use my audio analyzer and run some noise through it you can walk around with a calibrated mic and look at the frequency response in different parts of the room it won't show you much if there's phasing issues

So, for those of us who don't want to move furniture around just for fun or experiment, what's best?

No furniture between speakers to preserve image or some furniture in-between to break up standing waves?

I've always found that draping curtains over the top and sides helps.