What Could Cause Center Image To Present Lower than Expected

Having the speakers 4” from the front wall is doing you no favors, especially with excellent speakers like yours that image/soundstage so well.  The first thing I’d do is pull the speakers out at least a foot , and two feet even better, just to see what happens (don’t worry about how it looks for now as this is just for experimental purposes at this point).  Also, I’d try the speakers more like 6’ apart and experiment with toe-in — I like angling my speakers, which are similar to yours BTW, so they fire just outside my shoulders.  I bet just doing these few things will make pretty significant improvements all around but especially in 3D imaging/soundstage.  Also, if your listening chair is against the back wall pull it out a few inches, and your ears should be at tweeter level so if your seating height is above the tweeters that’d be something else to adjust if possible.  This is just a rough starting point but would be very interested in what you find.

I am trying one thing at a time and listening awhile.

Great approach!  When you say you “reduced the tilt” what do you mean.  As others mentioned, I’d think if anything tilting your speakers back just a tad might help raise your image height.  Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding.  I still think you could pull your speakers out another foot and move them a foot closer together with just a bit of toe-in.  Be interested to hear your thoughts if/when you ever get to that point.  My room/speakers are similar to yours and after much experimentation I found this basic positioning to be the best for overall tonal balance and imaging/soundstage, but way too many variables in there to know if it’d be an improvement in your system and for your tastes.  Still, very interested as you make each adjustment — if nothing else it’s an excellent (and free and fun) learning experience, no?

Lost but not defeated

Very well said!  Put another way — YOU’RE LEARNING VERY VALUABLE INFORMATION!!!  Yes, what you’re doing now is hard and often very frustrating, but keep fighting the fight and you’ll get there!

Question - in a perfect world --- should it ever appear that an instrument is coming directly from the speaker in the soundstage? Or should everything be presented in an open space? I hope this question makes sense.

There are some recordings — oftentimes older recordings — where the sound of an instrument or singer will just be “stuck” to the speaker.  Nothing you can really do about that because it’s just baked in and can also be a function of the speaker design characteristics.  But, I find the better you get your speakers dialed in the less “sticky” they become and images tend to just float better in space.  This is the prime benefit of the effort you’re putting in now.  I’d forget about tilting the speakers back at this point because you’re just introducing another variable into the equation you really don’t need to deal with on top of all the other very important stuff you’re trying to figure out.  Keep experimenting with the basics — distance from back wall, distance between speakers, toe-in, etc. — and once you get that right, and you’ll know it when you do, then maybe mess with how far to tilt the speakers back if at all.  Keep in mind, your speakers were not designed to be tilted so just don’t do that until you have the other stuff right.  Just my $0.02 FWIW, and keep fighting the good fight!  It’ll pay off.