I've not been on for a long time so apologies for picking this up late in the day so to speak. I too have a Yammy A/V receiver, mine's the RX-V777 and i must say i'm very impressed with it's range of features and overall performance while tackling both movie and music. I'm in a small apartment so my "living room" system has to be a jack of all trades, personally i think a 7.1 set up in a small space is over kill, as well as being too obtrusive with conventional loudspeakers, even bookshelf speakers need stands or something to sit on, so rob you of living space, the only way round this problem and is the route i'm ashamed to say i've gone down is the Bose acoustimass system, I have a 5.1 setup and it's taken me ages to get it sounding right (i'm not sure if they do a 7.1 system yet), anyway there are loads of other manufacturers of similar arrangements, Polk Audio and Kef spring to mind, at the end of the day you have to remember it's a trade off and unless you are lucky enough to have a cinema room, then speakers and their placement are almost certainly going to depend on other things or you risk your room resembling a stereo shop.