Help on soundstaging

Down and dirty advise. Bring them out into the room about 4 feet and set up the listening position equal distance from the speakers as they are from each other. Start with toe in so the axis of the speakers crosses several feet behind your head. The move your speakers backward and forward a few inches at a time, and/or your listening position, and see what happens. Also vary the degree of toe in from having the speakers pointed straight ahead to where the axis crosses in front of the listening position.

With a lot of careful listening and patience you aught to find a pretty good sound stage.

If you want more specific advise provide some details about room size and present position of listening position and speakers in your room. Describe any room openings and windows as well as floor and wall furnishings, etc. Also describe the tonal sonics as they now exist.

Move them a more healthy distance from the front wall. The greater of 4' and half the distance between listener and speakers is a good place to start. More than that is better. You also want to maintain the same minimum distance between the listener and back wall. The laws of physics can be in conflict with a feminine sense of aesthetics.

You cannot have large objects between the speakers. A direct view television is right out. Switching to front projection was the best thing I did to my soundstage.

Toe-in will help especially if the room is narrow. Aiming them directly at the listener is a good starting point. Farther toe-in may help in narrower rooms or if they're overly bright in your room.

You need to sit the minimum distance you can without loosing driver integration so that the direct sound isn't getting lost below the room's reverberant field. This is probably under 8'.

Having the speakers form an equilateral triangle with the listener is a nice place to start (60 degree subtended angle between speakers; this would put you 7' from a line drawn through speakers 8' apart).

Treating the first points of reflection should help.

are they on the long wall (my suggestion), the diagonal (some have had great results doing this in problem rooms), or the short wall (where a lot of us begin...)?

How about a $14 tweak ?
Radio Shack sells Caig Pro gold de-oxidizer and gold contact treatment kits. Clean up your speaker terminals, cables and interconnects, and if any's left do your power cables. Just did this last weekend and it really helped the soundstaging, everything sounds so clean and right.

Wow I thank all of you for your replys. Here's my situation on the room. I do have the spkrs on the short wall--9ft.The width of the room is 13ft. Also the opposite wall--seating area is longer than the spkr wall which makes a sweet spot a little uneven. In addition the short wall has a window on the left side(if you are sitting in front of the spkrs)and open on the other side. Thers is carpet on the floor and the window has roman shades. Like I said apartment size dimensions. Do you remember the commercial where a couple hands a house designer a faucet and says build me a house around this? Well lets build a stage. Stay tuned.