Listen. I own a Lexicon MC-12. It's considered to be one of the finest surround processors in the world, with a list price of around $9,000. When I listen to my MC-12 in Logic 7, Lexicon's world-reknown surround processing mode, I almost
never hear the surrounds, nor would I want to.
The goal of surrounds is not to make each one of your speakers noticable: it's to make whatever source you're listening to sound as realistic as possible.
Not only do you not want to make your surround speakers noticeable, the majority of specifically-designed surround speakers are designed in such as way as to further
reduce the amount that the speaker is noticed.
In other words, people spend good money (is there any other kind?) and lots of it deliberately trying to eliminate the effect whose absence you're complaining about.
Jeff