Either you are over driving the amp or the center channel speaker. I have all three LOTR and they were mastered very carefully on ATC speakers. It shoudl not sound harsh as there is no problem with teh soundtrack. IN fact, the only clipped signals on these DVD's is in the LF 0.1 channel, which should not be noticeable as it only occurs on explosions etc. (They over did some of the loudest LF stuff by boosting the digital data into clipping...hey after all it is the movies...).
Note that most Hi-fi domestic speakers compress and sound dull at extremely high levels of SPL. This can upset the balance between your center and your L and R channel if one set of speakers starts to compress before the others such as in the situation where center and L/R speakers are not matched and from same manufacurer.
I don't like the fact that you have your pre-amp at max volume...this should not be necessary and suggests a problem in line level matching somewhere.