Most newbies to home theater think that the surrounds should sound like the main or wonder why there is no sound coming from them. The reason is that dolby prologic has an algorithm for determining what is sent to the surround speakers (usually ambiance, etc). For dolby digital encoded dvd's the sound engineer places sounds on 6 separate tracks; front, left, center, surround left, surround right, and lfe (low frequency effects i.e subwoofer). As stated previously, if your receiver has a 5 channel stereo mode then all 5 speakers should have the same sound. If it makes you feel any better my surround speakers have a +5 set on them. Hope this helps. Paul.