Albert,
I defer to your superior knowledge most of the time, but c'mon, his room is SEVEN FEET WIDE!!!!
Taking into account the width of the speakers, it would only leave less than 4 ft. between them even if they were touching the side walls. If you give them 1 ft. of clearance on either side you now have 22 inches separating the speakers. I'm sorry, but that won't work for any speaker, maggies especially.
Even if he sets them up on the long wall giving them 1 ft.(pretty lame for di-polar speakers) of clearance to the wall behind them and butting his couch up against the other wall, he is now around 6 ft. from the plane of the speakers. Not enough for maggies to integrate.
No, I don't agree with 1.6s in this application at all. The best he can do is a pair of mini-monitors on the long wall and listen in the extreme near field. At least that is my suggestion.
Oz