You may find more a benefit to your 7.1 if the sides were more directly to the side or slightly in front.

I had near 20ft of dead air space between my side surrounds, and my LR surround is almost like a very wide front, as the system is corner situated. The rear center speaker helped fill in the gap nicely, especially during action shots in movies. I now notice sounds from LR, RR and RC are much more defined and yet blend better during softer surround effects.

My sides are slightly to the front at close to ear level on stands, the rears are raised and mounted, they fill in everything else nicely, I can hear a fairly significant difference when the rears are off.

I guess you'll have to move the couch back and get a bigger TV.

I notice a difference between 5.1 and 7.1 and I'm glad I use 4 Qs8's. Mojo, it just appears from your pictures that your surrounds are very far away from you and maybe spread out to far. My rear Qs8's are maybe 8ft or so apart and not as far back as your pictures appear. Also, my left/right surrounds are slightly behind the front row and in front of the back row seating.

I havent tried our theater in 5.1 but the side rear's are placed a bit in front of the listener, at about 6.5 feet high. Im sure we could have gotten away with 5.1 easily but its not everyday I get to design a dedicated theater so 7.1 it was since the back rears are behind us it really does give the effect of things flying over your head and stuff. Even though most movies barely make use of the surround channels

I do have great surround sound with the vast majority of movies but I find that the rears add absolutely nothing. However, I do continue to have challenges with DPLIIx and Neo6. The vast majority of music doesn't sound better in these modes. Some music however sounds absolutely incredible. One idea I had was to send my side signals to my rears and do away with the sides to see what kind of a difference that would make. Has anyone tried that?

I finally got cable today for a free trial (not free for the cable company though as it had to spend a couple of grand to upgrade the infrastructure). Cable TV sounds absolutely incredible with DPLIIx when I make my surrounds very hot. The picture however is a different story. I prefer watching cable on my PC as opposed to my 32" LCD Samsung. Windows Media Centre works great by the way for recording programs.

Homedad, my sweet wife had some not so sweet things to say about your suggestions .

I only use DPLiix for movies, for most music I still use 2.1, unless I'm listening to a concert video that has 5.1 options, I'll check it out.

For movies if I turn off my rear speakers compared to using 7.1 in DD + PLIIx modes, there is a very noticable difference.

Thanks for all the input, guys... I think I'll order the QS4s right now. The room width might be a little small to take full advantage, but I might as well go for the gusto.

Thanks again!

Steve

Love the design for the theater, Steve. Thanks for sharing.

Steve, as to your room width, the basic idea is that the back surround speakers should be separated at least enough for the usual listening positions to have a speaker both to the left rear and right rear. Once that's satisfied, the same principle as applies to the front speakers should also be applied: separate the back surrounds by about the same amount as your distance from them. For example, if they'd be about 8' behind your listening position, they should also be separated about 8'. In most cases your 14' room width should be plenty for adequate separation.

I'm also in the "rears make no difference" crowd. I have my QS8's spaced 12 feet apart and surround material is absolutely incredible. I'm convinced the Qs8 is one of Axiom's finest speakers. My m2i rears add nothing to the dimension, I've actually just unconnected them.