surround sound

Airplay355

this weekend i heard one of sonys home theater in a box systems, bottom line is that it sucked and hurt to listen to....it was a disgrace to all speakers ever made....one think i did notice however was that i could tell where the sound was coming from, if the surround speakers were playing a sound i knew it was from behind, same with the mains........is this a good thing in a system? or should you not be able to tell exactly where the sound is coming from........on my system you cant and i wanted to know if that was because my surround speakers ( yamaha) arent matched to my front sound stage (rti100s and a cs245i).

Lsi9

Well...what I think is more important is, are all the speakers creating a soundfield together? I think that is the point of surround sound...Your question can be a veiled discussion about Dipole vs direct radiating...which can go on forever...
as far as your speakers are concerned, check the timbre rating of each...