[Nacimroc]

First issue:
I'm just fixing up a home cinema/PC room and will be installing speakers this week. I'm mounting a projector to display on the chimney breast just above the stove in the pic below. I got 2 big freestanding speakers for left and right but I don't know where or how to put the centre speaker. I read about virtual centres, but the seating will be mostly off to one side so that wouldn't be great? I think it might look odd by itself right in middle of chimney breast? How about heatproof speaker under the stove maybe? I have really fancy heat proof material from work that would work that I could use?

Second thing:
Speaker selector switches. My PC will be going just to the left of where pic was taken above. I have a 5.1 now and will use that whilst sitting at PC. BUT, when I move to sofa I want speakers to change for the projector. So my front left becomes my rear left etc. Surely there is some cheap 8/10 way switch that can just switch between them without having expensive selector switch units with remotes etc? I don't mind the manual switch at all and can solder it up myself!

Thanks

[Gaspode_TWD]

I run a virtual centre and sit off centre without a problem. However, my speakers are work well at creating a good stereo spread with clear centre image. Why not try with yours and see how it sounds. The one thing that will kill the imaging in that room is if you push the speakers back in to the alcoves. An alterative might be, if your kit can cope (i.e. can you bi-amp the centre), to use two small speakers either side of the stove? I suspect that any speaker placed above, below or close to the sides of that stove will suffer fairly quickly.

For speaker switching wouldn't it be easier to use two inputs that have different channel allocations?