Hi. I am setting up my first multi-channel system and have a question about speaker placement/receiver setup.

I have an Arcam AVR-300, 4 direct radiating bookshelf speakers, and one matching center. My confusion comes from the fact that while I have 5 speakers, my room is laid out such that the two speakers providing the surround soundstage need to be wall mounted in positions closer to what would traditionally be the rear surround speakers in a 7.1 setup. That is, they will be about 150 degrees from center rather than ~100 degrees or so traditional for side surrounds in a 5.1 setup.

In this case, should I hook up these speakers to the side surround outputs and use the receiver in 5.1 mode or the rear surround outputs and use the receiver in 7.1 mode but will the side surrounds configured to "None"? Will doing the latter "tell" the Dolby algorithms that the speakers are further to the rear of the listener and allow them to process the multi-channel bitstreams accordingly?

Thanks, Tom

In this case, should I hook up these speakers to the side surround outputs and use the receiver in 5.1 mode or the rear surround outputs and use the receiver in 7.1 mode but will the side surrounds configured to "None"?Use the side surround speaker connections. Your receiver won't let you have the rears active with the sides set to None.

If you're using only 2 surround speakers and have to place them behind you, try to spread them as far apart (symmetrically) as possible. This will make it easier to hear left-vs-right separation with stereo information in surround channels.

Sanjay

Thanks. A follow up: should I increase the time delay to those speakers (or conversely reduce it) to compensate for their placement?

Only if their distance is different.

should I increase the time delay to those speakers (or conversely reduce it) to compensate for their placement?Go into the Speaker Delay Settings of your receiver's menu and dial in the proper distances to each speaker (including the surrounds). The receiver will automatically figure out how much delay (if any) is needed for each of the speakers. Nothing more complicated than that.

Sanjay