Thanks I am going to take his advice. In fact I'll probably just go 5.1. The room is not functional yet I am working on it every weekend and hope to have it up and running in the next couple weeks. The bookshelf is being moved out this weekend. Any suggestions for cheap acoustic treatments around the towers? I know I have lots of improvements to do which is why I'm asking as I am setting everything up.
I pretty much repeat the same things over and over again, so if you read up in the acoustics/setup forum just for a bit, you'll be reading what I say all over again, if not elsewhere too (it's probably been a hundred times, honestly).
You need to get away from the back wall. If you insist on being against the back wall, this wall is now the first wall that must be treated, and with thick broadband absorption. Typically, you want at least several feet away as a bare minimum, if possible. Ideally, the starting point is 38% of room length to ears, doesn't matter from front or back wall. This is for best avoidance of axial modes. This number may drop down to as low as about 33% with the inclusion of nonaxial modes.
I like to describe the need for treatments increasing when either you or the speaker is closer to a boundary (except for those speakers that are designed to be right against the wall, without BSC). So since your towers are so close to both side and front boundaries, those indeed would be a good place to treat. Remember, you want thickness/mass in absorbing lower frequencies. 1" of the typical stuff will do nary a thing for the lower midrange.
Treatments are not cheap unless you build them, that's just how it goes. Basically, what just-some-guy said.
