Hey all! Happy new RAAL tower owners here (just arrived yesterday!) Really excited about the speakers so far and they sound totally awesome (thank you to the whole Ascend Acoustics team!). We are using an Outlaw 2160 receiver paired with a Rega Planar 3 for input. This is our first real stereo setup (coming from Paradigm v3 mini-monitors with a NAD L53).

We are struggling a bit to get good placement in our (less than ideal) room and hoped you all may be able to give us some pointers.

Our house has a single mid-sized (about 600-700sq feet) living room/great room style layout with lots of openings for entry to the kitchen, hallways, entryway alcove, etc. We only really have one location where the speakers go well, which is between a "old school" brick fireplace and the exterior wall with a window in it. The brick fireplace juts out into the room 8 inches from floor to ceiling, which creates a corner between the brick and the wall. The hearth extends about 3 feet into the room, but is only 14 inches high.

The space between the hearth and the external wall is only about 8 and a half feet. Right now, we've got the speakers 5 inches in from either side (measured from the back corner of the speaker which is closest to the outside wall or hearth) and 1 and a half feet in from the back wall (measured from the back corner which is closest to the back wall). After toe-in, this puts the maximum space between the front-inner corners of the speakers at about 73 inches.

Due to aesthetic reasons with our listening position (important to my better half!), we are trying to maximize the distance between the speakers to minimize how close in the listening position needs to be. I believe at 73 inches, the listening position should be about 100 inches out (based on the multiply by 0.73 recommendation in the manual).

In the current positions, with toe-in to aim directly at the listening location, the back of the speaker is almost pointed into the corners between the hearth/back wall and outside wall/back wall.

Between the speakers, we have a chair, lamp, and end table. In the current position, the space between the speakers at the height of the drivers is mostly clear, but the chair sticks out in front of the speakers lower down.

On the outside wall, there is a space heater. At the current position, the speaker is mostly behind the heater and out of the path of the main heat updraft, but is still likely to be warmer than the other speaker in the winter.

So, based on all of that, we hoped we could run a few questions by you all and see if we are doing anything massively stupid:

1. Is it a big deal/no-no to have the back of the speakers pointing close to a corner like that, at 1 and a half feet out?
2. Is the brick fireplace chimney corner (which only comes 8 inches into the room) likely to setup any odd reflections or other issues?
3. Given 73 inches between the inner corners, is there any inherent issue with having the speakers this close together, other than the listening position being pretty close in?
4. Is it likely for the chair/end table/lamp between the speakers to be an issue, even if the bulk of the obstruction is below the height of the drivers?
5. Is the space heater something to be concerned with at this distance?

We know at the end of the day what matters is that it sounds good and it definitely sounds good as is! But, given our newness to having a really nice pair of speakers, we would appreciate any feedback as to whether anything here may be a major issue or could be causing degradation we can't yet detect, especially without a better listening environment to compare to.

I've attached a picture of the current setup. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the time!

Tower Placement.jpg