Introduction of surround systems to home theaters caused a growing interest in methods of the multichannel sound realization. The paper describes experiments that were aimed at discovering the influence of visual stimuli on the perception of surround sound. These issues are examined based on subjective test sessions. The background of experimental procedures and the results of experiments are presented. Some general conclusions pertaining to the discovered influence of visual stimuli on the perception of surround sound are included, allowing one to formulate some rules for joint audio-video processing. These rules are derived based on data processing using the genetic algorithms.