Onkyo tx-sr 702 and speaker setup

I am having a weird feeling that my surround sound isnt up to what it is supposed to sound like. I have an onkyo surround receiver model tx-sr702, which i have heard is a good reciever. I also have 7 speakers and no subwoofer just yet. The speakers that i am using are RCA and the specs. on the speakers are as follows:

4" Woofer

1"inch Ferrofluid cooled tweeter

Impdedance (nominal) 8 ohms

Freq. response 85 hz-20khz

Power handling 60 w rms

Max power 120 watts

Sensitivity 86 db @ 1w-1m

I have fooled around with the receivers setup and found that when i make the reciever automatically configure the speakers it sounds worse. If i watch a movie like frequency which you can hear the effects in the beginning of the movie, i hear all of the sound coming from the center channel. When i set the equalizer settings to off i can hear the effects but it wasnt as loud as it was in auto equalizer mode(which was set by auto config the receiver had performed). But when i turn off the eq. setting and set it to off why is the sound so much lower, and should i sett all of the speakers to large or small.

Thanks for your help, sorry this message is so long also.

Gerard~