No need to get into a heated debate. The average person with an average room should certainly use the suggested surround speaker placement as a guideline / starting point. This is after all a guideline since only one person can sit in the so called sweetspot. I live in a rental house and putting too many holes in the wall is never a good thing. I use QS 4s in my living room and they placed according to suggestions made to me by members of this board and are now roughly where Dolby recommends. I believe the main point is that the speakers do not draw attention to themselves during the movie. Since every room is acoustically different and some dedicated viewing spaces have room treatments repositions speakers may enhance the listening experience. I would say that if a person was to build a room to exacting specification set out by dolby and used the exact equipment dolby specified then we could say it is a hard and fast rule. The only real right way is the way it sounds best to me. On paper my room for instance is too narrow/small for the
size of my fronts but what matters is it sounds great too me. It was mentioned that AlaskanAV's speaker placement was not optimal and I would tend to agree but given the constraints he has with doorways etc you make do with what you have and again he is happy and that's what counts. I myself don't take offence to constructive criticism since I am no AV expert though i have been involved in audio for over 35yrs.
Nick , should you ever get around to testing a set of QS 8s in you theater I would be interested to hear your thoughts. I have contemplate adding rear surrounds by repurposing my QS 4's and adding 8's to the side surrounds.
Just my random thoughts
