WHat about four speakers.......

I'll admit to using the Dynaco-style L-R rear speakers scheme in my reference rig. I have a 6x8 pass-through library just behind my listening chair, and mounted small monitors high up on the sidewalls, facing each other, using barely visible AWG20 black hook-up wire, and of course a nice wire-wound 40 ohm pot. I rarely use it on classical works, but on some jazz and rock it's a great way to provide ambience and wider stage for lean or dry recordings. Plus it subtlely fills that walkway with enough sound so that it doesn't sound like a big "null" as I walk through it to sit down in the sweet spot.
My system consists of a 7.5' equi-triangle in a 24' long room, so I have lots of room behind the speaker plane, thus providing a VERY deep stage. However, dialing in these rears progressively shortens the stage depth as the rears fill in! It's almost like having my listening chair roll forward on rails! Not at all an improvement on great classical recordings, but fun for multi-mono rock and jazz.
The solid copper Radio Shack AWG20 and small bookshelf monitors (Super-Zeros, Atoms, etc.) are fine for this, as one is only trying to dial in a bit of L-R ambience, so perfect timbral matching and low-frequency extension are NOT important, unlike true digital surround matrices.
I just set up such an HT system in a larger, livelier adjacent family room from mid-fi NAD receiver and Spendors, and with NAD's EARS 5.1 synthesis from FM 2ch or TV 2 ch. the fake-surround is fun. But there's NO question that the ultra-deep stage I get from my 2ch ref rig is much preferable for serious classical and jazz listening. I'm glad I didn't try to make an all-purpose music-and-HT system...I think digital surround has a long way to go in soft-ware development before it becomes an efficient, viable alternative to nearfield 2 channel in a well-damped room!

Detlof: sorry about my poison pen (hmm, keyboard?) coming out again. Some time, when the moon holds water, I revert to my true nature: that of a curmudgeon. No excuse, but I guess TWL's early post is what prompted my barbs. Again, what bothers me the most is the knee jerk reaction to whatever new, large electronics companies propose, that I have come to expect from a lot of audiophiles and, you will have to admit, the vast majority here, contrasted to the ready acceptance of products that come from so-called designers, that actually offer nothing or next to nothing but are hailed as major breakthroughs. Just read the comments on the sound quality of SACD or the need for such a format posted on A'Gon. It has not been out that long and a lot of people here have already relegated the whole thing to the trash bin of audio history. Since SACD is a double barrelled approach, in that it is both a high resolution format (in answer, I guess, to all those who have criticized Red Book CD into disrepute) and a multi channel format, it is difficult to comment on one and not the other. The reaction to the better resolution is to say that it is good, but not as good as "my vinyl rig" (Geez I wish I could hear such a rig). The reaction to multi channel is to say that the whole thing is not worth considering even for a moment since the pinnacle of sound reproduction has been reached with two channels ("you know we only have two ears") and since multi channel, whether synthesized or brought about by multi channel software, is only really feasible in the digital domain, the same people have to slap it down hard, especially in answer to a neophyte, so that the one and only true virtuous analogue road to sound Nirvana is safe. Not to draw lines in the sand, but why not ask the dyed-in-the-wool analogue/vinyl people to refrain from commenting on the new formats, if after the most cursory listening they pronounce it as mediocre compared to their technology of choice and also to refrain from commenting on multi channel if all they have to say is that it a good idea whose time will never come? Sorry for the rant, I would have a number of questions on setting up a multi channel system based on the ITU Standard recommendations for SACD reproduction. I hesitate to ask them in this forum, as its membership (at least some of its most vocal portion) appears at best totally uninterested, and at worst quite hostile, or at least cynical, to anything that really changes their beloved paradigm. My most basic recommendation at this point is the following: buy the cheapest Sony SACD player you can find, buy the Vaughn Williams "A Sea Symphony" on Telarc and tell me that it can be bested by another recording available in another format, even in two channel mode (for sake of diplomacy, I refrain from using the usual "at any price" taunt here). I can only guess how wonderful it should sound when I have the extra channels connected. By the way, the term "micro-dynamics" seems to me to be an oxymoron, unless one believes that every part of infinity is also infinite in itself... Regards and salutations from the mid-fi trenches.

Pbb, thanks for the lengthy remarks from one curmudgeon to the other. Can't say that the quality of my reply -at least there where it was personal - was any less curmudgeonlike than your scorn, which promted it. You're right, must be a lunar influence. Cannot find any fault in anything you had to say in your last post, in fact I find that it makes very good sense, only the trenches you aim your fire from, don't seem mid-fi at all, or shall we say, your amunition certainly isn't. I'm a vinyl freak, but all the same, I cannot fault you in what you have to say about certain opinions here on A, which are indeed less than tolerant and abound with rash judgings. I've read TWL's post and just ignored it, because I knew he was wrong. But then perhaps the moon wasn't yet high enough.
Do you have a better word for micro-dynamics by the way? I think there is a difference between components, which swing the range between a fff and ppp very well, whereas there are others, which cannot do this, but excell in getting the difference between a pp and p or an ff and an f just right. Perhaps one should properly speak of the "rendering of micro steps within the dynamic range at the ff or pp level", or something like that. The term may be an oxymoron, but it is handy and it describes a bit of aural reality to my mind. Well, enough already, cher confrere, lets go out and enjoy the moon drawing water, or play football between the trenches, as they used to do on occasion during WW I on the Western Front, very sensible at that. Cheers!