Do you lose much sound quality in a 3.1 flexible speaker configuration on a Home entertainemnt system?

Question

as opposed to having the rear speakers spread out over the whole room

Answer 1

It's really not fair to look at this as a quality question. The (Quality ) of playback or broadcast sound itself is the ability to reproduce the sound as close to it's natural state of original production as possible. While rear speakers will greatly enhance the quality of the ( Surround ) sound experience. It would not necessarily increase the overall quality of sound. In addition, Two channel sources such as the common CD would require additional processing and consideration of a possibly needed delay value. If ignored or incorrectly set, the rear speakers would technically make the sound worse.

This is what is also known as sounding FAT. Funny huh?