Hi Johnny_Be_Good,
The point I make is "ideal" placement, based on my own experience in various listening rooms at A/V magazines where I've worked and reviewed all kinds of speakers, including in my own living room and at Axiom's dedicated listening room at the plant.
It's what Dolby Labs suggests and I concur. BUT NO ROOM IS IDEAL (or few are) and multipolar radiators are very forgiving. It's impractical to make stands of ridiculous heights. The QS surrounds work well on the stands supplied. Are you happy with the sense of envelopment they provide?
Up higher is usually better--my QS surrounds are at uneven heights. One is on a stand, the other is much higher across the room on top of a steel mesh equipment stand. It didn't take much adjustment of levels and surround distances in my setup menu to get them delivering a really fine sense of envelopment.
I've heard installations using direct radiators at the rear of the listening room that delivered a terrific sense of envelopment. You have to experiment, and these "rules" are meant to be broken when the limitations of the room dictate certain setups. In my experience--and I stress that--it's easier to achieve good envelopment using quadpolar (or bipole/dipoles) surrounds than direct radiators. And that's also how the vast majority of multichannel movies are mixed--with dipole surrounds. (Multichannel audio--DVD-Audio and SACD are a different case, and tend to be mixed with direct radiators all-round, which is fine for the mixing engineer with his chair on castors in front of the console. He can move back and forth and find the "sweet spot"..Most of us can't do that with home setups, which is why I continue to recommend multichannel surrounds for DVD-A and SACD.
Regards,
