u/notforrobots

I just picked up some XR14 speakers and rushed home to set them up on my dining room table like any normal human would do. They almost sound great but reading the manual it speaks of getting a mq104 eg to really make them shine. My question is do I really need to go that route or would a decent stereo eq suffice in this situation? I'll be running them with an old Onkyo tx6500 as a budget build. Any advice would be appreciated.