My fronts will be 12 feet from my sitting area, the surrounds will be at about 95 to 100 degrees to my left and right. If I use rears, they would end up 14 feet behind my listening position. My room has 8 feet ceilings and is 15' 6" wide. Fronts will be M80's or 60's, surrounds will be QS 8's, and rears will be ?????

Hi spine, that's quite a large room...I understand that it is 26 x 15 1/2 x 8 ft ? what is between your seating position and the rear wall?

Adrian, My 9 year old says there will be a pool table behind the seating area; we'll see. Also, there will be a piano against the back wall.

Shooter, my first thought is that since you have plenty of room behind the listening position for a rear sound field to develop, you should definitely use a 7.1 setup. If you do use back surround speakers the side surrounds should be as close to a 90 degree angle directly to the side of the listening position as possible, since the back surround speakers will be supplying all the back effect needed.

As to which speakers for back surrounds, because of the distance involved direct radiators such as the M22s would be suitable since they'll have room for the sound to spread out. Some prefer the QSs all around, however. As you already have M22s in your other setup, you might order a 5.1 system with QS8s first and also bring your M22s in temporarily to compare the effect of switching the QS8s and M22s between the various surround positions. Then, order another pair of QS8s or M22s to suit your preference.

I know this sounds like a broken record, but here I go again. My room is 31ft x 30ft x 9ft ceilings. The HT portion is over to one side of the room, with the screen set back another 6ft, kind of an l-shaped room. The bar/pooltable are on the other side. Left/right Q's are about 9-10ft from the sweet spot, the rears are around 8ft back (wish I would have placed them further back).

If you choose to go 7.2 you might consider the rears mounted from the ceiling, as the back wall is quite a way behind the seating position(14 ft). You could always try 5.2 to start and see how you like it or if you went 7.2, you have a 30 day trial to find out if you need the extra QS8s or not.

I'd second Adrian. Consider moving the rears closer. Two points: 1) you get better uniformity of the surrounds as you can set the "oval" speaker distance setup everybody wants. 2) you won't blast out the occupants of the rear of the room who will be very near an M22 working hard to get sound 14 feet down the room at the same SPL as the fronts. If that is not a concern, then order the 5.1 system and you are set to go.