An audio system has multiple loudspeaker devices to produce sound corresponding to different channels of a multi-channel audio signal such as a surround sound audio signal. The loudspeaker devices may have speech recognition capabilities. In response to a command spoken by a user, the loudspeaker devices automatically determine their positions and configure themselves to receive appropriate channels based on the positions. In order to determine the positions, a first of the loudspeaker devices analyzes sound representing the user command to determine the position of the first loudspeaker device relative to the user. The first loudspeaker also produces responsive speech indicating to the user that the loudspeaker devices have been or are being configured. The other loudspeaker devices analyze the sound representing the responsive speech to determine their positions relative to the first loudspeaker device and report their positions to the first loudspeaker device. The first loudspeaker uses the position information to assign audio channels to each of the loudspeaker devices.