I was curious if this would be a good idea:

Instead of buying M50's for the fronts and QS8's for the back, how would 4 QS8's measure up with the 150 center, with no M50 fronts?

I suppose if your never going to listen to music/CD's you might get away with it, as long as you have a sub for the low's.

It would open up the sound field up front, definitely, but at the price of stereo localization, which music certainly is engineered to provide, and most movies take advantage of as well.

It might sound a little more like a movie theater, where the main speakers are hard to localize and are often behind a slightly soudn diffusing screen, but I would worry about power and soudn propagation. There are no front facing drivers on the Q's and thus, the soud would have to bounce all around the room before it got to your ears. It might sound really weird.

Maybe you could try an experiment and purchase the Q's and hook them up to your theater first as your mains. Listen for a bit and see what it sound like. If it's cool, then buy the remaining two and be done with it. If it doesn't soudn good, then move them to the back and order soem M50s.

Anyone here have an easily reconfigurable system (maybe a pair of Qs on stands) that coudl be swapped out and placed up front as an experiment? Mine are strapped to the walls, and taking them down in a pain....

i think it could concievably work for everything but the center. i imagine it would be bizarre for characters on the screen to be talking from the extreme left and right of the room, in addition to the funky reverbs of the walls.

I wouldn't touch it for music but it might be real interesting for movies. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to run VP100 mains for a single night (boring ) but haven't had a chance to run QS8 mains yet and have promised myself I'm not going to spend any more nights experimenting with speaker config and placement until my new house is finished and I am no longer behind at work