>>critical placement issues made me a bit wary

My experience wasn't that placement was "critical", just that you needed a whole whack of space. I always had the best results when they were FAR FAR away from the wall, sort of like the "bookshelf speakers on stands in the middle of the room" setup.

I have read that you can run them quite close to the wall if you get everything right, I just don't know how to do that

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