Speaker placement for 2-ch AND 5-ch same room

Wow! You increased the WAF by using 7 speakers.

Actually, the set-up you suggest sounds reasonable so long as there is nothing between the Odysseys (e.g., gear racks) and they are still away from the walls, and it sounds like they are. The soundstage may suffer a bit from having another set of speakers so close in, but you can check the effects of this by simply moving the Scenario's away (e.g., 5 feet or so) and see if there is any noticeable difference while listening to the Odysseys. If the speakers sound much better to you without the Scenario's nearby, consider having some easy way to move the Scenario's back and forth as needed for movies.

My first thought was that you should simply try HT on a stereo setup, but that big screen would force you to move the Odysseys only about 3 feet from the wall. That could also damage the soundstage and imaging. But, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter much and you might also want to experiement with that. If the Odysseys sound just fine in a position that allows you to utililize your screen without moving the speakers, you might want to sell the Scenarios and buy your wife a nice gift (hey, maybe there'll be something left over for that upgrade you've always wanted). You could still use the center and rears with the Odysseys, but you may also get away with just using a pure stereo mode. Experiment and trust your ears.

The screen is retractable, which helps a lot.

I was trying to figure out how to get the 2-ch and 5-ch together in one - in fact, that was my original intent. But tube gear generally is not good with remote controls, and useability of the 5-ch stuff is CRUCIAL as my wife is simply not going to fiddle with more than one remote. In fact, at the moment there are three buttons to push and this is nearly ruining it! If I separate things, then I have an easy-to-use solid state system for movies and an old, muzzle-loading analog tube system for music. The common components are the room and the subwoofer. I was astonished to find that the Descent has provisions for this sort of thing!

Anyway, I'm asking now because the room isn't built yet and I'm more than a little suspicious that my current temporary room won't let me evaluate this. (It's 13x14x7 - can you imagine that with 7 speakers in it? Especially with the Odysseys 4+ feet from the 14' wall?!?!) I should post a picture of it - it's a riot, but all I have until the addition gets built.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" and "Where there is a will, there is a way" come to mind. With 7 speakers in the present room---I'm betting you'll be going for 9 in the larger room.PS, don't forget that extra center for the rear;for "pro-logic-2".

Blw, with the "remote" constraints, I can only say that you have done a masterful job managing the situation. You still may wish to experiment with moving the HT front speakers later (i.e., away from the main speakers when playing music and then back again for HT -- see if it matters and find a simple, wheeled?, way to do this if it does), but apart from that, it sounds like you are far from nuts.

Here is some food for thought,before speaker placement issues,note that your dimension of 15x21x9 have a commom denominator of 3,meaning all dimensions are divisable by 3.When this occurs(all dimension having the same common denominator) there is a chance of peaks(boosts) and vallies(suckouts)at certain frequencies do to the room dimension excessively renforcing each other.Is it possible to stretch the room to 16x23x9 ? I would contact Audiogon member RIVES,and run it by him.I may be overracting,but an ounce of pervantion is worth a pound of cure.
Good Luck
Dave
davehrab