Your advice to speakers designers

I agree with Prof. Everything must be designed; a speaker does not design itself. And a physically beautiful speaker can also be a superb sounding speaker - and this applies to electronics, cabling, etc. When it comes to speakers, fit and finish go a long way; and the ability to customize the finished surface (wood, paint, color, etc) is a bonus. For example, my Zu Def 4s are available in an almost unlimited combination of finishes. The only problem is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find that this especially applies to electronics. 

inna,

"I rarely just sit down and listen,

"

Wait. What? You don’t sit down and listen to music?

Did you wander into a high end audio forum by mistake? :-)

Can you explain further: Do you just listen to high end audio as background music for other activities?

You can pretty a good sounding room up a bit but room treatments are inherently homely.  It's all subjective anyway but anything dealing with sound absorption/diffusion is going to have to have quite a bit of surface area to be effective and will have to be placed where it works effectively.  Neither of these things are conducive to good looks.  If looks, decor are a priority the sound will suffer.  I don't believe there's any way around it.  

jon,

My living room (in which we put our nice furniture and decor) was good sounding even before I remodeled it with an acoustician. It had an asymmetrical layout with bay windows, a wide opening to a hallway, and a good ratio of furniture and live to dead acoustics. Whether it was speaker designers, or sound mixers, or fellow audiophiles, all of them were amazed by the sound I got in my room.

After the remodel, it’s even easier to get great sound. And the room treatments are all hidden, built in to the structure of the room in a way that no one ever suspects to be room treatment. It’s completely "clean" looking of room treatment in that sense (I hate the look of room treatments).

And I bet my room is sonically better than plenty of people spending far more on speakers, placed in rooms which are aesthetically challenged looking.

It’s just not true to say if aesthetics are important "the sound will never be great." That’s what industrial design, a care for style,  and ingenuity are all about.

prof, be nice, will you? Especially when visiting my threads. 
To answer your question. Imaging is not everything. The better the sound is the less need you have to sit in front of the speakers. But I am not far from them. I do critical listening too from time to time.