It seems everyone has a different idea about how to get good imaging and achieve a good soundstage. The enemy in achieving this (assuming your speakers have consistent dispersion in the midrange) is REFLECTIONS from walls. So given that, go into a huge room and almost everything sounds good. The closest most of have to that is outside in our driveway or back porch (not under any roof). What makes this work is massive reduction in reflections. A lot of people have never tried this and its a shame as tells you what your speakers actually sound like. What’s important about this is a "baseline" of comparison, now you know how good they can sound and you’ll know when you go back into your listening room how far you are away from that. All this work trying to find gear that works in small room never works. .
There is one solution, someone mentioned it, move your speakers closer to you, get yourself and your speakers in a small equilateral triangle far away from walls. A 2 foot triangle is not too small to hear this effect. What you have done is reduced the level of the reflections and increased the level of the direct sound. You have increased the ratio of direct vs reflected, which is always a goal in any studio, listening space, auditorium, etc. Now listen to that, not too loud (don’t excite the room to much with energy) and don’t use subs for this experiment. Okay, this is about as good as these speakers can sound in THIS room. Now you know the difference between the best it can sound in this room vs outside in no room. You know a lot more than you did before.
Now next step is to slowly increase the length/sides of the triangle until the sound changes so much you don’t like it anymore. You WILL find that point. What is this point? The point where reflected sound begins to equal the level of direct sound. Now you know the limit of the triangle you successfully use to hear things as good as they can be with these speakers in this room. Make the standard a little smaller than the limit and it will always sound good. DO you have to move things every time you listen? Probably. Can you find a speaker that works better than this in this room, maybe, but unlikely. The performance you need to sound better in that room may not be known by the store or expressed in the literature. Remember, no one else has your room so all other "experiments" in other peoples rooms mean zero to you. Your room is the only one we care about in this case.
Treatment can expand the size of the triangle and reduce the reflected sound vs direct sound and therefore improve the image/the sound. Generally speaking the number one goal is to reduce the first reflections, then the second ones, etc until the image begins to emerge/. If you have crap speakers that don’t image, you’ll never get there, but if you are using speakers other people here post about (as having good imaging) the room is likely your only problem; Not amplifiers, not preamps, ,not streamers, not DACs, not cables. All these things can make it better or worse but are not the key contributor to imaging. The speaker/room interaction is the #1 reason things sound good or bad.
Brad