So I got home just a little while ago after work. I had the monitors playing all day with various music at medium + level. Just walking into the room I noticed the speakers sounded much more open (definitely more full sound) than last night. Clearly break in is progressing at a decent pace.
I did get the stands today and I just switched them out with the packing boxes. Suffice it to say I do not recommend using the packing boxes as stands
This made a huge improvement and the speakers sound quite wonderful now...very articulate and coherent. The lack of image height is also gone and the room is filled with a large and VERY deep sound stage. Since I have the sub (which I have been putting in and out of the system for evaluation) I don't feel the need to move them closer to the wall for now.
My upstream equipment consists of Canare speaker wire custom made by a friend of mine, Echole interconnects (I cant wait to try the speaker cables which I will move from another system later tonight). I use a Primare A32 power amp which is a 180wpc beast... but a very sweet sounding beast. I may look at changing that but it is just fine for now. I have a pair of Mastersound 845 monoblocks which I stopped using when I went to an inefficient speaker. My front end consists of a Phasure NOS1a DAC. The Phasure also has a volume control so no Preamp needed.
I am going to do more listening and will update.
By the way did I mention the speakers are BEAUTIFUL. I'll try to get some photos over the weekend. Thanks Loius