If your imaging and sound stage depth then nothing should be between the speakers, only an amp on the amp stand and the rest clear. I see photos of people buying big $$$ speakers and all around the speakers, there are TVs, stands, even chairs, and couches. No front wall acoustic panels etc. To me, why spend money to really never get to hear what you paid for, then complain the speakers sound bright and so on. It is not always the speaker but the lack of care in setting up your room so the speaker is allowed to do what it was designed to do, so do the best you can. You will be surprised how good they sound and no need for band-aids tweaks to try to alter the sound to be more pleasing, anything you put under gear or on top you are just trading one set on resonances for another. You can put 4 firm apples say under a preamp and the sound will change. Anything you add will change the sound even the stand you sit sour gear on, it makes me laugh when I hear this amp or speaker, etc. make you hear the way the recording was intended, that is utter BS, only time you hear it as intended was in the recording studio if recorded as a group in one room or concert hall. With today's mixing and digital technology. where tracks are laid down anywhere in the world, and put together later by the producer, then you only would hear his idea of the sound he wanted in the mixing room/control booth no longer a group of people sitting in a studio working on the sound they want. Sad if you think about it.
I learned to do room setup the best you can for a given room and then tweak toe-in and spacing and some speakers in a given room will sound much better closer together than trying to spread them far apart, for a given room the goal should be to try to trick yourself into feeling you are hearing a real band with body playing before you.
