Hello!
You dont listen to 2 ch audio with the sound processing stuff in your receiver!!! Well you can but if you cant get the simple 2 ch sound from known
well recorded sources to work well then adding the sound processing stuff is just going to mask deficiences and make things so much more confusing!!
To really get an idea of what your speakers will sound like, turn off all the processing HT stuff and play in 2 ch mode...once
you get this setup right then you can play with all the DSP HT sound processing stuff....
Room placement can be extremely critical and you keep playing until your out of physcial placement options. Then room treatments if needed.
Stick to the simple basic adjustments first.
Sorry, dont need to dictate or tell someone how to set their stuff up, but hate to see someone that owns such world class speakers not being able to really enjoy them.
One comment I did pick up in your trying to set up the speakers to make all you cds 'good' you mention that some of the demo cuts on Jims disk sound ok but other cds you have not so good.
Well unless your have all the really great 'reference' cd's alot of cds out there will never sound good, because they just are not!
If you can get Jims demo disk to sound really realistic and good then your probably as about as good as its going to get in your room, if all the other basics of which many have mentioned (wires, connections etc) are ok.
A long time ago, 1987 I had a set of speakers with wires to an amplifier which was directly driven by a high end CD player / deck. The least amount of interconnections, the least amount of electronics...get the source to the transducers in the shortest simplest path available. No preamp, no Lexicon, no tape deck, etc....
It then is down to finding and enjoying the best of the best.
Best of Luck
Alex