[redduck21502]

In the next few months, I will be tearing out a wall between the kitchen and living room. I will leave a half wall of 42" tall and a bulkhead above the counter which is 12" to 16" tall and a little over 2' deep. Since I will have increased depth to the ceiling into the kitchen, I was hoping to add rear surrounds to my setup to take advantage of the 7.1 Blu-Ray discs that I have. I currently use in ceiling speakers for my side surrounds and I plan to use similar in ceiling surrounds for the rear surrounds. Instead of 8" drivers, I am looking at 5 1/4" in ceiling speakers. I am not asking for advice on going with another type of speaker for my surrounds or my mains, I am happy with the in-wall/in-ceiling setup, after all, it is only my living room. My question is where to place the rear surrounds? I can put them in the bulk head, but this will only sit about 3' behind the listening area. I could put them in the kitchen ceiling, but I don't know if the bulkhead would interfere. I also thought of putting them in the kitchen side of the bulkhead facing away from the living room for a more diffuse sound, but my current side surrounds sound OK to me directly pointing the tweeters toward the listening area. I also thought of putting them in the opposite bulkhead face.
I am going to try to include a rough sketch from MSPaint to illustrate the setup of the house and the HT. Also, how far apart should they be? Should they be the same distance apart as the L/R in the front?

 

[eugovector]

It would be great is they were the same distance FROM THE LISTENER as the fronts/center. In other words, the distance from the speakers to your ears, ideally would be equal (Left = 8', Center = 8', Right Surround = 8', etc.)

However, every surround AVR should provide time delays to compensate for the difference in listening distance.

The distance between the surround speakers is not as critical, your ears don't do enough imaging behind you to make worrying about a cohesive "center-back" image a priority. Get them far enough apart that they will be outside the farthest point of your seating area (so no one is sitting to the left of your left surround), but don't get them too close to the walls. Slightly behind the seating would also be good in your case.

Look for speakers with an aimable tweeter. This will allow you to play out with the amount of direct sound your getting, and better allow you to control direct reflections off the left wall.