0.5m is the minimum to ensure the speaker will work well in the sense of not having a bad interaction with the room. Optimal is then atop that if you tune the installation further for the room - luck may sometimes mean you hit it immediately of just have a ‘good’ room for speakers. My room is quite good but it was well-worth finding the right spot with quite large differences in presentation easy to achieve by small positional changes.
It is worth it as once you find the right place it is done for years ahead is what I found.
I’m not far from your placement now. Width is 2m between them, 66.5 inches off the wall and around 1.10m from the side walls. Will keep it like this for a week before I look at slight adjustments. I’m now hearing far more dynamic range. PRaT is on steroids, bass deeper and punchy. I have the remixed Queen box set on coloured vinyl which sounded very flat and muffled. No dynamics. A Day At The Races has come alive - Freddie sparkles, piano is precise and clear … and sounds just like a piano . Roger Taylor now hits his drums with intent and sounds powerful. U2 which I’d given up on are now tight and the Clayton’s Bass drives the songs along. All really amazing - I knew position was important, but not that it would have such a significant impact on the rest of the system. Only problem now is finding more time to indulge all this.
Just joking Frenchrooster. The speakers are 2m apart and when I’m sitting in the middle of the sofa my ears are 1.9m from the centre position of the two speakers.
A number of days on DB dropped, them back by half an inch and toed in by 5mm - best I’ve ever heard them. Not sure if you’ve seen the picture of my room but it’s created a bit of controversy - I’d never heard of near field listening All sound great so thank you.
Nice and cozy! Speakers have space to side and are apart enough to work into the room so you should be fine.
I’ve been dealing with power-cuts here so HiFi has been off a few days and I’m missing it!
I find there are broadly two camps: near-field and far-field listeners. I have friends who slip nicely into one or the other with speakers very close to listening position or way down a long room - and they get great results but with characteristic differences in presentation.
Me - I want both aspects - but have probably tailored it more for near-field. I tried the ‘long’ direction of my room and it sounds very different, but not overall better to me.
These speakers seem to work well when the ratios of space around them from either side to walls and diagonals means they each get their own environments to work - I found more apart worked better than close-together for a lot of large speakers so far - as long as the room has the space to the side of the speakers.
. Roger Taylor now hits his drums with intent and sounds powerful. U2 which I’d given up on are now tight and the Clayton’s Bass drives the songs along. All really amazing - I knew position was important, but not that it would have such a significant impact on the rest of the system. Only problem now is finding more time to indulge all this. 
All sound great so thank you.
