wilsom MAXX3 or Evolution Acoustics MMThree ?

Ed, looking at the pics of your room, it doesn't surprise me a bit that you were having problems with the Max 2 and 3's! Your room is waaay too small for those speakers. Also, your speakers are firing into your couch! One of the most important aspects of this hobby is to match your speakers to your room....
BTW,The MM2's seem to be also firing into your couch..:0(
Perhaps a better option for your room would be likes of a TAD CR-1.
I am surprised that your Wilson dealer would sell you Max's in a room of that size, a better match would have been the Sophias or the Duette's IMHO.

Ed and JTinn, look up the wave length of a 20hz bass note.. I think you will find that the effect of trying to reproduce low end notes in a small space is to fall off the propagation of the wave of the note. This is akin to the effect that one hears when you are several feet away from the car with booming subwoofers...you can hear and feel the note far more in fact than the driver of the offending vehicle.
Additionally, you are artificially damping the wave from the speaker with your couch, thereby altering the note and probably diminishing it as well. Which all leads me to my conclusion as to why Ed has been so unhappy with his bottom end reproduction... Frankly, I am amazed that he is pleased now! I wander if you had a more appropriate sized speaker on stands that could span the couch height what you would think then!

Jtinn, I agree that i have not seen Ed's room dimensions. However, with the pictures of his room and the relationship of the MM's to the side walls, It seems highly probable that this room is sub-par, size wise, for a speaker like the Maxx's. Sure, the Maxx's may work in some areas very well in a room like this, BUT Ed says he wasn't able to get the bass response he was looking for.. which as I said doesn't surprise me. I don't think that you could argue that the Maxx's are a bass deficient design!
IMHO, it is a given that in order to hear true bass extension you need a truly large room.( and of course a speaker than can deliver the goods). My point about the wave length of a 20hz note is well known. Shoehorning in a speaker that is too large for a given room is a very common occurrence in our hobby-- Many dealers try to upsell a larger speaker, either with little regard for the room that it is going to be used in, or what the listener is trying to accomplish, again IMHO.
Mike, the fact that the Maxx 3 is a rear ported speaker may have in fact assisted the speaker, given that the front wave has to overcome the stuffed couch which it is being asked to fire into..:0)

Thank you Tabl10s! I can understand the WAF factor that Ed has to deal with, I think my hubby understands this too..;0)
BUT, I do think that a speaker that could have spanned over the top of the couch would likely sound much better. Particularly, if that speaker had no chance of overloading the room or the decor. Maybe a subwoofer in another part of the room would have been a thought? Anyhow, i guess if Ed is happy, that's all that counts, after all it is his system..:0)