Am I a multi-channel convert??

[nightflier]

But, once I got my speakers aligned properly and matched the surrounds with the mains, it did not take much to convince me at that point.

Wooch,

I've been playing around with my speakers since I am about to purchase some new components and I wanted to make sure I'm looking at the right issues in my system. I now have 4 identical speakers and enough room to try different things. However, I don't really want to spend the money on another single speaker to replace my center channel, although I think it may be one of the reasons my SACDs don't sound ideal to my ears.

If I remember right, SACD requires five identical speakers and they need to be positioned differently than a typical HT setup. If so, SACD really won't sound as the original mixing engineers intended through a HT setup, which typically has a wide-dispersion center channel and more diminutive rear channels. Of course, some engineers may actually compensate for this because they realize most people don't have a dedicated SACD setup. [Come to think of it, this may be another reason why Sony was lukewarm about pushing SACD and decided to push for the DTS standard instead. I wonder...]

While this may not be an issue unless we're doing very critical listening, these factors do come into play when we introduce into the discussion such items as higher end SACD players and approximations with live concerts. For my part, I'm looking for the answers in the components of my HT system, but that will be expensive. So if it's just the speakers, I want to know that beforehand.