Good grief this is complicated stuff! Anyway, we positioned the back surrounds flat on the side walls (Paradigm ADP 470's) facing each other. But, they don't have much umph. It's like, "I think I heard that, did you hear it?" Not right. Maybe this won't help, but should we try moving them up or down on the side wall? When hanging them, should we be measuring from the floor up to the bottom edge of the speaker, or from the floor to the center point of the speaker, or does it just not matter that much??? I'm grasping at straws here. The manual said place them 6-9' up and that seems like a big difference. We have 8' ceilings.
If you can't hear them, then the placement won't matter much ;) When you say 'back surrounds' do you mean the rearmost speakers of a 7 speaker set-up? If so then you have to find source material which has this encoded into it. I agree with Jan - try the callibration procedure in the handbook.
Jan and Diablo thanks. You were right. We calibrated them with a meter tonight then watched The Aviator. Wow. We have Paradigm Studio 100s for the fronts, the CC 470 center, and ADP 470s for the rears, a sub, and Denon 3805. We're new at this, but tonight was the best its sounded yet.
See what reading the owner's manual can get you? You might want to check through the manual again, there may be some other things you missed. It's easy to do when you get something new and complicated such as an AV receiver. Seriously, sit down and read the book and make certain you have everything set up to give you the best sound possible. Do the same with your DVD player since the set up on the source will affect the final sound quality. Then pull out the book on the TV and go through its set up menu to get a vast improvement over what you are hearing and seeing now. I suggest you obtain a Pixar Studio's DVD (or any DVD mastered to THX standards) and go through the THX set up menu they provide. Put those settings into a memory on your TV and receiver and you can easily switch to the correct set up whenever you want. If you have macros on your remote control, the switch can be accomplished for TV and receiver with one button.