My recent experimentation with different absortion/difussion materials suggests that everthing you do makes a difference, with trade-offs. Sometimes I even think that not having anything in front of the RPTV has its advantages.
The possible hidden benefits of a large object between your speakers is that this creates another intersection to use bass/tube traps etc. I put a couple of 11" tube traps to side rears of my RPTV so I now have 4 traps across the front wall (ie the room corners and the corners created by the RPTV wall intersection). There is no question that this approach has lead to a definite significant improvement across the board.
Erniec
The possible hidden benefits of a large object between your speakers is that this creates another intersection to use bass/tube traps etc. I put a couple of 11" tube traps to side rears of my RPTV so I now have 4 traps across the front wall (ie the room corners and the corners created by the RPTV wall intersection). There is no question that this approach has lead to a definite significant improvement across the board.
Erniec