I guess I should have clarified my question. While that section of the manual says go parallal, another section (pg 21), describing set-up, says that the selector switch should be set to the impedence of the mains and center. Thus, if one was using 8 ohm mains and 4 ohm surrounds, the manual says use the 8 ohm setting. But by following the rear surround advice on pg 23, the exact opposite results. I guess that no damage would result from either setting, so maybe i'll just try series at 8 and then parallal at 4 to see what sounds better.