I don't place my speakers in the right spots, but luckily (like Sonos and others) room correction software really helps with this. Especially after A1Evo.
Soundbars are a great solution really, I never understood the negativity towards them. It's all I recommend to my friends as I know they are unable to comprehend what a receiver is and then what speakers to get and let's not go into subs.
Encoding to AV1 is good to cooking CPUs.