I'm a bit confused regarding the receiver settings for distance, particularly in regards to surround speakers. Here's my scenario:
My couch (and therefore listening position) is against the back wall. I have the surround speakers mounted on the back wall high above my listening position, as I've read that one should for best results (I have standard 8 ft. ceilings and the speakers are mounted about 1 ft. from the ceiling). Because of the assymetrical nature of my living room, the surround speakers are not equidistant from my listening position. One surround speaker is directly above my listening position, the other is about 8 feet from that one. How do I determine the distance setting for my receiver, for the surround speakers? First of all, do I determine by measuring from the speaker to my head position (which would be 4 ft. for one speaker, 8 ft. for the other), or do I measure laterally straight out from the wall to where I would be seated on the couch (about 1 ft.)? If the former, would I split the difference and set it for 6 ft?
By the way, my receiver is a Pioneer VSX-D509S and it only has settings for speaker distance in feet, not measurements in time delay (i.e., milliseconds). It also does not have separate distance settings for each surround speaker, only one distance setting for both surround speakers (in a 5.1 setup).
"do I determine by measuring from the speaker to my head position (which would be 4 ft. for one speaker, 8 ft. for the other)"
this is the correct method. Since your receiver does not allow different settings for each speaker, you'll have to experiment. try average distance and go from there.