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......

My home theatre speakers (and I occasionally use my L/Rs for music listening) are all covered in black velvet. (Except the front of course).

In this case it is to eliminate any light reflection from the speakers back to my projection screen, and also for the speakers to totally disappear from view when the lights are out for movies.

Though I also like that benefit when I pull out the L/R speakers to listen to music.   In low lighting they really disappear from view leaving just the sound floating in the room.

Need to, no, helpful yes.

@prof - Hah! What an interesting idea!