Hang on a tick. Something is not right if your surrounds cannot roar. I have one sub located in the front left of my HT room. I was watching "The Haunting" and there is definitely ROAR coming from the surrounds. It impressed me so much that I thought I had two subs right behind me. But that is not the truth. The truth is that any descent surrounds can roar if you have your sub crossed over low enough. If your crossover is set at 80 or below (80 being the top threshold of what a blind listener can tell direction on) your system will trick you every time.
Think about it. Say there is a surround effect being played on a movie track. A train passing from RR to LR. Almost certainly the sound of the train is going to be represented by many different frequencies throughout the normal range. So if your crossover is say set to 100hz you will have directional sound coming from the surrounds and the front soundstage. Whereas if you have the crossover set to 80hz or below. All the sound will appear to come from the surrounds. You will hear it all behind you even though some is actually coming from in front of you.
I used to think my sub needed to be set around 100 because it was such a good bass producer that I wanted it producing as much of the bass range as possible. But as soon as I did my testing and SPL levels and such, it was unquestionably better with the sub crossed over lower (60hz). I only wish that I could have tried 40hz but my receiver only goes down to 60hz.
There was a great article on this at Audioholics I believe. The title being something like "Turn that crossover setting down!!".
$.02
