Paul,
Connect only one of your front speakers to the receiver. Leave the other front disconnected and see how it sounds. Put the receiver in either direct or stereo mode. Also just for testing set your crossover to the lowest level on your receiver and turn off the LFE channel. Then play a cd from a different source this time and see if it makes a diff. Keep the speaker itself setup normal with the connecting strips in. Let us know what happens now. I am trying to eliminate polarity problems, crossover problems, and source problems. If the speaker sounds much better then we can solve this issue.
