Vintage Advents too big for small room?

Forget monitors if you can't move them away from the walls and into the room. Their whole trick is imaging which demands away from boundry placement. Dimensionally, even happy sounding little monitors customarily make up in depth what they lack in height and width so don't expect much gain there. But if you're still dying to experience monitors check out the Epos line; they make some budget butt kickers.

How much room do monitors typically need? I can only get the Advents about 6 inches from the wall due to their size and my room constraints, but smaller monitors could be 12 inches or more from the walls. Would that be enough, or would monitors need more than that to function properly?

Okay, I got the Advents out of the corners and up on stands, and I'm beginning to remember why I fell in love with them 25 years ago. My next question is about spacing and toe-in. The only general rule I can find is that the distance from the speaker face to your ears should be 1.5 times the distance between the speaker centers. Is this a valid rule? If you have to err on one side or the other, is it better to be farther than 1.5/1 or closer? In this room I'm 8 ft (96") from the speaker faces, so theoretical ideal spacing would be 64". Due to furniture, electrical, and WAF limitations I can get them to about 70", or I can get them at about 50", with 70" being logistically preferable - that's where they are presently. Would it be worth the trouble to try them at 50"? If the crowd here has had experience to know it's not worth it, it would save me a fair amount of moving.

Additionally, I'm sure they'll need to be toed in a bit. Is the best starting point with the speaker faces perpendicular to my sitting point?

I may get this room listenable yet!

I wanted to revive this thread just to thank everyone for the great advice and provide an update. The depth of knowledge and helpfulness here on Audiogon is truly humbling.

After exhausting my possibilities with placement and room treatment, I broke down and bought a pair of Epos ELS-3s with 30" stands. As expected, they are a much better match for the small room, pretty much eliminating the boominess and mud I was getting from the Advents. At that point, I had changed nothing else in my system.

What I was NOT expecting, was the incredible increase in detail and speed. While the Advents were close to SOTA in the late 70s, time and technology march on. I just hadn't realized how slow the tweeters in the Advents had become, and how much faster the 5.5" mid in the Epos could move compared to the 10" driver in the Advents. The difference was phenomenal, especially in my small room, and even more so at low listening levels.

With the NAD 7140 powering them, I certainly wasn't getting the bottom octave or so that I got from the Advents, but what I got was so much cleaner I almost didn't miss it. Since then, I've added a Hafler DH-200 that I'm about halfway through modding, still using the phono/tuner/preamp in the NAD and now I'm not missing it at all. The added power and damping factor of the Hafler has improved the bass of the Epos' to the point where I'm giving my room just about as much as it can handle without overloading it. At low listening levels, I still get almost everything. I'm amazed, frankly.

I also built myself some speaker cables from nice 12 gauge OFC and gold spades and bananas. I'm stunned at the improvements I've gained just from these simple upgrades, and for about $400 total shipped. Next I'm ready to start modding out my Thorens TD 150, then probably a second round of mods on the Hafler. I'll be hitting you guys up for advice again, I'm sure.

Thanks to all who have contributed so far. Have I reached the stage yet where I can post my system without embarassing myself? :-)

David