Hey, I was just nearing completion of my basement home theater and I had a few questions about setup tips. I bought:
M60 fronts
VP150 Center
QS4 Surrounds
EP350 sub
Basement is pretty big, dont have measurements
I plan on buying the Onkyo605 some people have mentioned before.

My questions is more about initial setup tips. The center channel will be placed on top of a 55" rear projection HDTV. THe M60s will be about 10-12 feet apart, the rear surrounds will be 7' high, about a foot behind the listener. Sub placement will be tough, its a pretty big basement (couldnt afford the EP500). Its basically a big rectangle, with an adjacent rectangle room that is open to the theater area. I dont have any pics, sorry, but what are some initial tips to get started with. Any help is appreciated. It is quite sad that I have had my speakers almost a month and they are boxed up, having only listened to them for about 3 hours combined time...

Thanks in advance

First, congrats on your speakers!

For your M60 distances. They should be apart from each other the same distance they are to you, to form a perfect triangle. So if you are 10 feet from your right M60, and left M60, your M60's should be 10 feet from eachother.

For your sub, if you have a very long RCA cable (here is a 25ft for $7.89) then you can place your sub where you would normally sit, play some bass heavy music, and crawl along the walls to see where the cleanest bass response is. That is where you will want to place your sub.

In additon, toe them in.

I don't know your basement layout since you didn't include wonderful hand drawn pictures (like many of our board members do, lol), but surround speakers should generally be placed on the sides of the listener, not behind.

Any reason for the placing them behind you, like open doorways or something? I know the QS speakers are incredibly easy to place and will sound good either way, but just curious...

There is no reason that they cannot go right on the side, i thought i was told that they were supposed to be anywhere between 0 and 20 degrees behind me. It works out in my basement (really no obstructions) that i can go directly on the side, or a little behind.

Thanks though...if i were not at work, i would include a hand drawing of my basement.

AO, yes you're correct; when the setup is 5.1 without rear surround speakers to complete the surround effect, it's a good idea to position the side surrounds a foot or two farther back rather than being directly to the side, thereby giving a little help with the back.

JK, thanks

Another quick question (and i know its a controversial one). Since I am going to go with the Onkyo 605, 90w/channel, Should I bi-amp my m60s. In theory, it sounds like it would help out if i am playing really loud. I doubt there would be a clarity gain, but internally, in the receiver, does it help out with either heat, stress, distortion, anything? I do listen to a lot of music, so often it will only be the M60s and sub playing

Thanks in advance

If by "bi-amp" you're speaking of simply connecting the unused back surround channels(rather than a completely separate amplifier and an external crossover, which is necessary for "true" bi-amping)to the mains, this brings no increase in available power. The one power supply section in the 605 would just be feeding its same amount of power to the M60s through two sets of output transistors(one previously inactive)rather than one. The transistors simply act as valves to measure out the required amount of power at any given instant from the power supply section; they have no power of their own to add or to lend to other transistors. Power can't be created out of nothing and each section of the speaker has the same amount of power available to it before and after.