Very good, Dean; that's certainly quite a bit for just "preliminary tests"! Not my favorite configuration, but one other that you might check would be vertical M22 centers immediately at the left and right edges of the screen.
On using the QS8s as back surrounds, of course you can apply DPLIIx to both 2 and 5 channel source materials to give the back surrounds some work.
Thanks for mentioning the sides of the screen John. Originally I hadn’t considered it since my mains are very close to the edges already and I figured it would be just like a phantom center, however I could separately control the volume of the center that way which was my biggest beef with running a phantom center using the mains.
I must say that I am very impressed with the M22s. At the lower volumes I’ve been listening at so far I think they may on a price vs performance basis be better than the M80s. I’ll have to also try them as mains teamed up with the EP500.
I’m starting to notice that the DPLllx is doing more than I realized. So far it seems to be very source dependent. I was watching parts of some “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes and listening to one scene in the Bronze it sounded like I was really in a bar with the characters. And those DVDs are only Dolby Surround.
