The answer to your question is likely "Layout 3 is best. Speakers should be mounted in the orientation they are designed for, rotating them generally changes the sound, often drastically."
But your question (and thus any answer to it) is almost pointless, to be honest, and this has absolutely nothing to do with judging your equipment or layout.
I think most of us understand just fine that we all work with the options we have. But you've excluded one option solely because it needs deeper wall brackets, narrowed possible answers down to just three options (why, we have eyes?) and indicated clear preferences based solely on aesthetics and practicality.
You've offered no information in regards to the sound. What is this going to be used for? Exclusively for movie watching, or does it have to sound good for music too? How's the room layout and dimensions? Where's the seating? How many people watching? Etc. What kind of sound levels are we talking? Reference? Loud? Quiet?
And the question you ask is, what is the better option - presumably (given you posted it on Audioholics) in terms of sound quality.
You finally conclude your post by essentially saying "don't answer anything I didn't ask", to which my post is obviously one big fail as well, but I feel like it has to be said (written) if any of this is to have any point what so ever.
Otherwise, we might as well just post "Here's the affirmation you're looking for, never mind what's actually correct, do exactly what you suggested." In my opinion that defeats the entire point of asking a question to begin with.
I hope you'll see the constructive intention behind this post, but if not, feel free to just call me a jerk and get it over with - no point in searching the forums for content to scold someone over, it's (ironically) really judgemental when you think about it.
