In my experience, a tall vertical rack and/or big TV between --or just behind-- the plane of the speakers is the fourth cause of getting mediocre sound from high-end speakers (poor imaging). The third cause is speakers placed too close to the front wall/sidewalls (boom, no depth, spurious images). The second cause is speakers placed non-symmetrically in relation to rear wall and sidewalls (wrong soundstage, deformed images). The first cause --in order of importance-- is a squarish room or otherwise bad room (reinforced room modes with nasty, non-equalizable nulls). I understand WAF and all that, but I think of the wasted money when I see so many pictures of wonderful systems with all of the above. Sorry for the rant.
