Home Theater

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Do you notice a difference between 7.1 and 5.1? I've been on 5.1 for I guess pushing 10 years now so I understand it's "old school" but then again I honestly don't know if I would notice a huge difference. I still get annoyed when I think someone's behind me knocking stuff over on a shelf or something, or the doorbell rings, and then I realize it's what I'm watching.

Tony,

It depends on the size of your room. If you have a small to meduim sized room there is zero reason to go to 7.1. I was 5.1 for years also until I bought my present house. The room I'm using now is much larger and I had holes in the sound as I didn't want to place the rear speakers on stands behind the sofa, they sit close to 14' from my ears.

Secondly there are very few 7.1 sound tracks out there at the moment, that is starting to change with the new audio codecs and Blu-Ray. Most movie tracks are mixed 5.1 so you aren't "missing" any sound when compairing 7.1 to 5.1 When listening to 7.1 the rec'er takes the 5.1 track and mixes it to 7.1

[slakker]

I agree... you can't really leverage the 7.1 unless you have a pretty large/long room... the 2 sides will be so close together, I would argue it may detract from the "imaging". And of all the movies I have, I only have 1 that's "6.1" with Lord of the Rings... none of the HD or Blue Ray stuff I got has it...

I think the whole 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 was "marketing" drive to differentiate with "more"... not even sure if it'll take off...