I guess my experience more or less fits with what you posted John. I haven’t noticed speaker placement near the wall degrading speech intelligibility, I have however, noticed that it effects the discrete placement of sounds tending to smear or spread them out, but keeping the driver portion of the speakers about 3 1/2 or more feet out from the front and side walls eliminates this.
Adding temporary acoustic treatments (pillows/cushions) at the first reflection points narrows the width of the front soundstage and reduces how enveloping it sounds. The only place where I’ve had wall treatments at the first reflection point help was in the apartment where there was a wall 3’ from the right main and out to 8’ from the left main. Here absorbing the first reflection from the right main balanced out the front soundstage, however, adding a reflecting surface 3’ feet from the left main not only balanced the soundstage but widened and made it more enveloping.
Before I ramble on to much Mike, my point is to listen to your system in your room for a while. Move your speakers around play with the toe-in, height use temporary treatments and see what various thing do before starting down a treatment path based on theory. I guaranty your room is too complex for anything but your ears to tell you what does and does not work for you.
I have proven to myself time and again that theory and conventional wisdom seldom stand up to the complexities of real world situations. I wouldn’t buy a speaker based on other peoples opinions or how it should theoretically sound based on it’s design neither would I (this time around) treat my room based solely on theory or other people’s opinions. IMO the best way to tweak your system is to learn what various tweaking sounds like to you in your room and then start adjusting things from there.
