Well I think I have NULLIFIED the issue
I tried moving the speakers to the other side of the room, where the sitting area was, and that gave me more bass but the rest of the sound was terrible. It was worth a try. I put the speakers back where they were except much further out from the back wall. They are now 38" from the back wall to the front of the speaker. The biggest change was moving my loveseat completely up against the back wall .. Voila.. instant bass with no compromise on overall sound quality. I still have to put up a few acoustic panels on the wall behind the seat just to clean up the high end a bit, but it sounds very good from there.
My seat was initialy 4 feet from the back wall as I was observing this 3rd of the room "rule" where the listening position needs to be somewhere around 1/3rd of the lenght of the room.. or something like that. It works great for tv viewing, surrounds are in nice position etc.. but with the new speakers it sounds MUCH better with the couch right up against the back wall. Now my QS8s are actually slightly in front of my head.. But I don't think this will be a huge problem, the QS8s are very forgiving in placement.
Now the only issue is my 46" tv looks to SMALL from that distance
.. Ah well, I guess that means I need a 60" TV then
Thanks everyone for the very helpful sugestions and ideas..
Cheers
