Boy this one has really gotten off the rails. I think we should try to put the personal stuff aside for a moment (and much longer really) and realize that there is some great stuff in this thread. As far as answering James’s original question from technical point of view I think JohnK had that covered in an eloquently succinctly way in the second post. And certainly adding to that direct quotes and links to Dolby and THX as AlaskanAVGuy has done gives James all the best technical information available. But beyond that we get to the part that can only happen in a discussion forum like this one, and that is what people actually did and how did it work for them in their opinion. This becomes a situation of the more the merrier and James can take away from it what he wants. I concur that a lot of these situations will be far from ideal and could probably be brought closer to the ideal given the compromises that had to be accommodated for but it also comes down to just simply what they did and how they felt it worked out. Theatre systems in living rooms will almost always involve compromises. I know mine does. But people don’t necessarily want to build a designated theatre room, or even if they did, they would probably still want a system in their living room and that will almost certainly mean compromises. I say let the personal experiment experiences role; as it really is the best way to gain actual knowledge on what happened in various situations. There is no way anyone could conduct all these various ”experiments” on their own and I really enjoy reading what people have tried and how they thought it worked out in the end. The other nice thing about these experiments is most of the people here are enthusiasts about Home Theatre which means they have most likely heard many systems that have been set up very close to the ideal as it is stated from Dolby and THX and this means they are able to give us a very informed opinion on how their compromises worked out.
