Am I the only one wiht speaker cozys ?

"  Am I the only one who does this? "

Probably.

"   so I ended up covering them with unused, sound dampening curtains to improve the smoothness and imaging. "

you shouldnt have to cover a speaker in order to make it sound good. 

 maybe a different speaker or equipment or room treatments are needed?

In my view, I'm adding more damping to the living room. The goal is not to make the speakers sound better so much as improve room acoustics, and reducing the speaker to speaker reflections that can happen when you are forced to keep the speakers too close together.

Best,
E

if thats what you think you need to do then ok......