In reply to:
(I don't care about movies yet - this is with regular cds and some SACD 5.1 discs).(I do have the police sacd, a surround sound organ cd and the flaming lips 5.1 disc - they do have a lot of sound from the Q4s - but this is only 3 discs).
This is very telling for me.
I think it's likely that your system could stand some calibration, but maybe you're expecting too much?
With 5.1 channel SACD or DVD-A discs, there's a lot happening in those surrounds...often equal to what's happening with your mains. But with everything else, they're just supposed to add some ambience (Sound F/X or "hall ambience")... NOT be equal in volume and output to the Mains.
Maybe you actually have the levels for them too high in order to "hear more" and that's causing the localization?
