Okay guys, thanks for your patience with this. I'll try to give you all the information so you don't have to pull it out of me one question at a time hah.
I don't know if my speakers allow bi-amping. Should I be utilizing both these speaker wire inputs at the back? Would I like connect the red wire to the top and the black wire to the bottom, or would I run speaker wire from two front inputs from my receiver and the two separate inputs on the speakers? Here's the back of my speakers:
And here's the back of my receiver:
To be honest, I don't even know how I ended up with the speakers plugged into FRONT A. Maybe they should be plugged into FRONT HEIGHT or maybe FRONT WIDE. I must have read the instructions when I set this up, but I could have very easily effed it up, too.
Also, I'm concerned those plugs into which I have the speaker wire inserted before they're plugged into the receiver are degrading the sound. Per accord1999's suggestion, I have ordered 14-gauge speaker wire from Amazon and I'm just going to plug that directly into the receiver once it arrives.
Kunkstyle - when I listen to my music, I do put it on Stereo. But you know what? It is sometimes louder on surround, which is completely messed up and definitely should have clued me in earlier that I have an issue.
I've played around with increasing the DB on the front speakers in the past, but I will double check it.