Indeed it was beer on the table.
[Let the record show that I was drinking crappy domestic beer only because it was there to serve others. You should infer nothing about my taste in speakers or music from that choice.]
Anyway, Alan, those are RT1000p that I bought in college. I have had rooms in which they sounded amazing and rooms in which they sound bad. Oddly, it seems that they have sounded their best in places like this that are wider than they are long and/or open on one end. I have owned them for 13 years and have yet to determine any pattern whatsoever in their placement other than that they seem to work best when toed in to point slightly behind the listening position. Downstairs in a 12x14 room they sounded good at higher volumes than other rooms but the high end got fatiguing rather quickly (there's another explanation for that though - the room was empty except for an office chair and a fish tank. It was like sitting in a tin can). I will miss these speakers only because of an emotional attachment, much like one might look back fondly on his first honda civic. Though to be quite honest, when at their best they sounded far better than other speakers I heard at even 2-3 times their price (of course, perhaps those speakers were poorly set up).
Anyway, with regards to their placement in this room, their replacements can't come out any farther. Both for WAF and for space reasons. Thus, if I got M80s the back of the M80 would be fairly close to the back wall.
That said, the M80s don't have their own powered subs built in, so I guess the considerations aren't quite the same. Any closer to the wall and these Polks get pretty boomy. I believe I mentioned how surprised I was at the bass quality when I put them where they are right now. In the last place even one inch made a huge difference though, so maybe they'd sound like crap even one inch farther back.
Funny you mention that, Dakkon. It's fairly clear that the FP was an afterthought. Inside the "box" around it all there's still finished hardwood AND baseboard molding. It's the weirdest thing - they didn't cut the molding to make a square drywall frame... they cut the drywall (AND the faux brick base) to fit around the molding. That made fishing the speaker wire and cat5e a real chore, since I couldn't widen the existing hole. Anyway, there's a bit more space before the top of the screen, but the bevel also juts out there more, so unless it was super narrow, like a 3" deep On-Wall sitting on the mantel (which is 7 or 8, I believe), it'd still run into the bottom there.
Alan, you mention an M2 as a center for music... I don't listen to multi channel music, if that makes a difference.
Can I assume that the M22s don't have any placement requirements that differ from most speakers? (Can I also assume that M22s with a good sub will be comparable to M80s?) The issue I may face is that there's no good place in this room for a sub unless I can stash it underneath a chair in the very corner, which does not sound promising sound-wise. I don't require a ton of bass (plus this room is under the upstairs neighbor's bedroom) so I can get away with skimping a bit there as long as it doesn't totally ruin the recording.
As tempting as it is to just put M80s up here, that does effectively triple the price. So if I can do M22s that's probably the smart move.
