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Surround is Surround. Look on the back of the receiver unit. You should see at least 6 speaker connections (i.e., 12 wire holes): Front Left, Front Right, Centre, Subwoofer, Rear Left and Rear Right. The labels may just be acronyms (FR, FL, etc.), but 6 is the number. If there are two more channels, they are for the bedroom speakers that you may or may not have.
You should have 5 speakers for surround: left, centre, right, left rear and right rear and you should have a wire pair (two copper conductors) for each speaker - no joining or twisting. You may or may not have a subwoofer. Strictly speaking, it's not required for surround, but is required for 5.1 (it's the .1).
To test for surround performance, you must use a DVD of a modern movie, preferably with special sound effects. I recommend Gladiator or a similar Hollywood blast-fest. THe sounds are easy to discern and separate.
The speakers should ALL sound clear at low volume. Even if you are not experienced with sound, your ears aren't lying to you and you CAN tell the difference. At high volume, the receiver doesn't have the horses to haul a big load or go fast, so the sound will get fuzzy if you push it, but all of the speakers should respond fairly uniformly.
I had to fiddle a bit with our Montana's receiver's settings to get the speakers to all make sound. The receiver is very under-powered and the speakers aren't great, but they are all clear at low volume, so Keystone hasn't sold us short. I have yet to investigate whether the wiring is all in-polarity (i.e., (+) to (+) and (-) to (-) terminals).
If you want a more theatre-style experience, you may want to change the components out for a more powerful setup with a brand name. They are pretty inexpensive these days at Best Buy, etc. and you can re-use the existing surround wiring, as long as it's there, of course.
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