In reply to:

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If you had said "...put the great majority of your money into the front stage and greatly reduce the presence of the rears" then we would be in agreement. But a little bit of rear fill is nice for ambiance -- it adds a warmth and fullness to the sound that is lacking if 100% of the sound comes from in front of you.

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It's just the current popular theory. The idea of rear fill in a quality oriented system was always to create a sense of reflected sound, as the goal is to recreate the sound of a live performance coming from in front and slightly above you. The concept is for the rear speakers to provide a sense of space, as might be heard in a largish hall with a slight sound reflection off of the back wall. Many now say that the sound from the front speakers reflecting off of the rear windshield pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

IMO, I just think that they're unnecessary. I have tried with and without and feel the sound is more clear and the right and left channels much more defined with just the fronts. Plus, if you have a large-ish sub the movement of the air from the sub tends to push the cones of speakers mounted in the rear deck, resulting in fairly nasty distortion.

Another nice plus is if you have an accurate sub (such as a higher-quality sub in a sealed enclosure as opposed to some bass monster in a bandpass box) the low frequencies will port through the factory locations in the back deck, thus not losing as much definition or "tightness". Of course, this point is moot in a hatchback.

One of the big problems with using rear fill with the Empeg is that most people like to power their rear fill with the head unit's amplification. The Empeg, of course, has no amplification. I just feel that the purchase of an additional amp or the extra expense involved with a 4-channel amp versus a 2-channel amp is just not justified considering the very minor effect.

Just my $.02.