Remember reading a few years ago that Neo:6 music mode was supposed to leave the front channels unprocessed when expanding a 2-channel source to 5.1/6.1. Anyone know if this is still the case?

Does PLII/PLIIx in music mode behave the same?

Also,
I've tried to understand what regular THX music mode, as implemented in the Onkyo xx6 receivers (and others), are doing with the front channels. thx.com don't have any detailed info. Anyone around here that knows?

//MN

Does PLII/PLIIx in music mode behave the same?It usually doesn't. As centre information is extracted, it is cancelled from the L/R signals. Otherwise you'd end up with an over-emphasized centre AND you'd be hearing centre content as triple-mono. Same with extracted surround info.

However, you might be able to adjust PLII/IIx Music mode so that nothing is cancelled from the L/R channels: set the Center Width parameter to its max setting (7) and turn Panorama on. This may give you what you're looking for, though there won't be anything coming from the centre speaker AND extracted surround info will be coming from the surround and front speakers. I've tried to understand what regular THX music mode, as implemented in the Onkyo xx6 receivers (and others), are doing with the front channels. thx.com don't have any detailed info. Anyone around here that knows?THX does post-processing (Re-EQ, Timbre Matching, Adaptive Decorrelation) but has always used third-party surround processing/decoding at its base: originally it was Pro Logic, then PLII, and now Neural. None of those leave the L/R channels untouched.