Okay, picture my room as a square, and now picture it as if the left side was missing, because that opens up into a living room (the listening doesn't happen there. So in this case, my room appears to look like a backwards C. The bottom base has a length of about 10-12 feet, but listening occurs only in the 4 feet because I directly face my speakers that way. The right width (only side in my room because the other doesn't exist as said above) is about 7 ft. The top base is the about 20 feet long, but again, it matches the wall parallel to it because that's where the listening occurs, and of course 8 ft. ceilings. So here's the dimensions : L W H, 12-7-8, but the real listening only happens happens in the first 4 ft of the bottom base. Hope I explained it clearly. So from I understand, my mp3 player shouldn't be used a source to play music through the speakers, but just through headphones? Why is that? The alternative I have is to directly rip the music to my ps3, which has good sound quality. As for what some of you are saying about sound quality in direct relation to the brand of the receiver; I thought onkyo was great for sound quality. I thought that a beginners' receiver such as the one I have had great sound quality, it just doesn't have all the technologies as the more expensive ones. To be honest, I really didn't know all this came into play. I thought it was just the speakers, and possibly the source.