I didn't want to make the speakers the main feature in the room, I wanted to hide them from direct view.

Just a shortly:
- Subwoofer can be anywhere in the room, the deep bass have no direction feature. I put it on the floor away and actually behind the curtain
- The main front speakers should be in the height of your ears
- A Center speaker must be in center, either down on above the screen
- The surround speakers are meant for surround sound. That is - you should not be able to tell from which direction this sound comes. So these speakers should not be positioned directly to your ears and their position can be on sides or a bit behind.

Note the direction of surround speakers. Since the surround is never recorded to be directional also the speakers don't point to the seating area but rather diffuse the sound from walls and ceiling.

The best is if the distance from front speakers and center speaker is the same, which is not this case, but this can be adjusted in the receiver (Sony) by entering the actual distances.

The Sony receiver has also a couple of studio modes which simulate the acoustic of few sony recording studios. I found out that for best sound it is actually better not use these programs (unless the DVD was recorded in the exact studio)