It's obvious that this is a dangerous question to ask enthusiasts,
@LukeBrown
But reading your post, I note the following takeaways:
- You're not overly enthusiastic about watching movies, surround sound and your TV viewing could be described as casual.
- You'd like to be able to listen to mainly music with some quality of reproduction (i.e. not a soundbar), and realize that this room layout is not ideal for this, but also have other priorities, fx interior design, that are priorities over the consideration for best audio reproduction.
- You don't like the TV to be the focal point of the room but rather the fireplace.
I appreciate the desire to tone down the TV. We are going to great extents to achieve the same (we don't want visible TVs when they are off). And thus I very much understand if reluctant to move the TV above the fireplace also, I've personally always felt that to look very awkward.
Now, if working within the confines of your post/takeaways above, I would suggest adjusting expectations. In this room and with this layout, I don't see a solution that works well for both watching TV and listening to music.
Stuff can be done to remedy that, for example adding a speaker as TLS guy suggests (it's a good suggestion, if you have the budget and the space/will to use three speakers), or even installing two separate systems. But considering you describe the TV viewing as it being fairly casual (to my understanding), you may be better of simply using the TVs speakers or (dare I say it) a sound bar. It's obviously not a very high end solution, but on the other hand if there's no real demand for such a solution, then why chase it?
With that, I'd suggest deciding that this is a music (only) system, as per your indicated preference. And in that sense, I'd completely ignore the TV and try to set the speakers up as symmetrical to the listening position and room as possible. In my opinion, this is your third solution. Maybe a bit on the wider side of setups, but on the other hand your floorplan seems to indicate a decent distance between the sofa and back wall, and in any case it seems to be the better option of what's available.
I would, however, suggest to rearrange the corner on the right side to allow the right speaker to be somewhat the same distance from the side wall as the left speaker. I realise there's a window there, but maybe stuff can be rearranged or even placed elsewhere in the home entirely.
Once you're done setting this up as a music system as ideal as you can get it in your room and with your layout, there's obviously nothing stopping you from hooking the TV up to the amp and seeing if you like the experience. I think it might be very awkward, but you can try. And essentially at that point decide if you'll use it for this purpose also, get a soundbar or just watch TV as you do now. But I'd design this system for stereo music exclusively.
I think with this approach, you can definitely get a good listening experience for music, rather than very compromised experiences when listening to the TV and music respectively.
And I would then suggest that - regardless of speakers chosen - that you maybe also consider either taller speakers or raising the speakers you choose if they're not floor standing. Ideally, you'd want the tweeter somewhat at ear level, and if you do happen to follow my advice of rearranging the corner, so that the speakers are essentially in each their own corner, then visually it's much less of a deal to have somewhat tall speakers. So there may be that benefit to it as well.
Also worth keeping in mind is that if you don't want a subwoofer (and I'm getting the vibe here that it may not be easy to work that into the design philosophy either), you'd want mains (L/R) that actually do a decent job without a subwoofer. So this worth making sure of this before you buy if I'm anticipating this restriction correctly.
Hope it helps you,
Nicolai