Is 6.1 Enought Or Should I Go 7.1?? - Page 2

Mazer, it is very obvious you would rather look online to find entertaining pictures to try and belittle someone else, but all that does is show that you dont have the brains to state something yourself.
BTW, apparantly I'm not the only one around with these super powers.


Sanjay, never once have I argued the tests. I will state again so that you may understand also, I do believe it is possible, and proveable. But if you can properly set up your front channel, and rear channel so that this does not occur (like mine and others) the 6.1, as opposed to a 7.1 offers a better directional surround experience.
Until a scientist comes to my house and proves you wrong I have nothing more to offer on this matter.

Sanjay, do you understand why 6.1 processing is more accurate and precise than 7.1? That, to me, overrides concerns about the theoretical reversals I've never experienced.

Moreover, if you're doing 5.1 discrete music, 6.1 positions the instruments closer to where they were mixed (for better or worse, I suppose)

OK, I'll bite. How do you set up a single rear speaker to avoid the reversal phenomenon? And how does 6.1 provide "a better directional surround experience" than 7.1 (i.e., what can 6.1 do that 7.1 cannot)?

Sanjay

I'd like an explanation on that too.

Add one more to the list in agreement with David.

The funny thing with "front/back reversal", you may not have even even realized it.

Don't know. How do you set up a single rear speaker *to* get the reversal effect? Have you done this? Or just heard about it?
Movies started out with front sound, then added rear sound, though, in a theater, the mono sound is all over the place, on all sides and rears. Then they added stereo to try to give more control and directionality. In order to place a sound directly to the rear you typically place it equally between the left/right speaker and the ear is supposed to do the placement as something directly behind, but only one person can experience this with 5.1 easily. 6.1 does what 5.1 is supposed to do most of the time with our ears, it just does it more precisely and more people can experience it.

In order to do 7.1 properly, one would actually want to derive the sides from the fronts and rears, but that's not how it is done. The derive the "back" speakers from the "rear" speakers which have been somehow renamed as "side" speakers. Not that this can't be done, but it won't be as precise as if the sides were the speakers that were derived because you are moving part of the rear sound to the side for the first time. If the sides were derived using dual logic circuits, the fronts/rears would be constantly compared. When there is something shared between them, it would be moved to the sides, exactly where the mixer would have intended and rear channel information would have staid more prominently to the rear, yet still with stereo separation. That's not the case with current 7.1 decoding technology, which just pulls "back" and "sides" out of the rears without using the front content to guide the side content.

But then, Dolby never seems to be certain how to approach rear channel sound anyway and seems to flip flop with the current trends or whatever their customers and associates seem to say.

No harm...I certainly understood what was being said, but many peeps around here have a hard enough time dealing with 5.1/6.1/7.1 without making up new conventions for the number of "speakers" that are used to reproduce a given channel. It's not a very consistent format, IMHO.

For instance lets go with 6.1 for a moment. Normal convention states that this is L,C,R,SR,SL,RC, and LFE.

But if I apply the "speaker layouts, X.x refers to the number of speakers/subs in the set-up" logic it could also mean any number of other combinations such as L,C1,C2,R,SR,SL, and LFE....who's to say I am not running dual centers..6.1 or 5.1?

Or maybe I am running dual mains with 4 subs...7.4 or 5.1? Whether these setups are conventional or not is indifferent. Clearly it's what most people would refer to as a 5.1 setup.

Anyways...my intent was not to sidetrack this thread...my apologies to the OP.

Lincoln, you sidetracking mad man! We'll talk soon.





Back to OP. I went from 6.1 (sides with one rear center) to 7.1 (two rear centers). It filled in the back better. How much better.....hmmmm.A little.It depends on how wide the room is.My room is small (13.9' wide). I'm sure I could have gotten by without it, but I do like the PLIIx w/ Dolby Digital.More the better for me.

Don't get me going....once when I was in band camp....

I am running 6.1 with an 8' back wall

I am using an MTM rear center that is identical to my front center

I obviously could have stuck with 5.1 - but didn't want to

7.1 would have been completely unecessary and a crazy amount of rear wall speakers (I cannot have side surrrounds based on the room layout

I am very happy with the sound

It's no different when using that convention to refer to source material. When you see "4.1", who's to say whether it's L/C/R/S or L/R/SL/SR? Movies are likely to be the former, while music is likely to be the latter. Likely, but no guarantee. When you see "2.0", who's to know if it means stereo or dual-mono? Movies from the 70s are likely to be the former while older films will likely be the latter. There's no way to know just from the number.

The X.x nomenclature tells you the number of discrete channels in the source, not their contents nor whether other channels have been matrixed in. Likewise, the same nomenclature tells you the number of speakers/subs in a set-up, not their designation nor location.

Sanjay

Right, it's contextual. Certain sounds (e.g., voices) are more prone to reversals than steady ambient sounds.

A certain sound effect pops up in front of you momentarily; how would you know whether it was meant to be heard directly in front or directly behind? You could be hearing it routinely and not even realize it.

So there's no way to substantiate the claim of never having heard it. Only repeat the claim over and over.

Sanjay

Well, 6.1, IMO, gives you much more dramatic and *more* surround effect than 5.1, so if I'm missing some, I'm still getting more.

Imagine what dipoles do with all of its miscues. Or inceilings or even side mounted 5.1.

A lot of these studies, when I look at them, don't even set up their speakers properly. I thought I'd looked at these before. Or they used crap speakers that have lots of cabinet effect or they were done 10 or 15 years ago.

If front/rear reversals are a problem, that means that every time someone speaks or something happens behind you, they sound like they come from the front. Maybe *you* have this problem, but most of us don't seem to.

Seriously, how many people here can't tell whether something is occurring in front of behind them? Do you all say "hey, could you do that again, but with two of you so it comes from the right place? Reversals seem to be junk science to me, based on not understanding how to set up a good home theater system in the first place. Inwall or really bad speakers might cause reversals, but that's about it..

So, if I understand you correctly, your appeal here is to the "well, heck most people have crappy HTiB type systems poorly setup so who really cares..." argument? Since when has mediocre been your benchmark?

How did you get that out of what I said?!?

In that case, if the so called "problem" is not even noticeable, then you must admit that it is therefore irrelevant and insignificant, no?

And conversely, if it wasn't heard, then there is no way to substantiate the claim that it is in fact still there, other than to keep repeating over and over that it is of course.

That's about the equivalent to asking someone to prove that the tooth fairy, unicorn, lochness monster, bigfoot, etc. don't in fact exist.

That's all that really matters. Enjoy!

I'd like an explanation on that too.

Nonic, give er a shot!
In my experience the 2 (7.1) rear speakers never really gave the impression that the sound was coming from the rear, it was more "surrounding" than directional. When I switched to the 1 (6.1) speaker setup, I got the localization I wanted from movie watching, and with music tracks even, it blends real well with all of the rest of the speakers as well, and adds space to the material as if you were in the middle of the band.
But, I sure wish I knew for sure that when a guy in a movie walks from behind me, then to the front, and it matches the sound, I have to wonder if they really intended it that way, same with trains, cars, planes etc. Cuz, if what Sanjay says is true, I think the studios, and DD, and the like have made a MAJOR mistake, because they come and go right by me like they are SUPPOSED to, from front to rear and vise versa, and apparantly that shouldnt happen, I should be watching a guy, plane, train, plane etc, come from the front, but have the sound come from the rear, and vise versa.
Guess my room is smarter than science, and I'm somewhat dyslexic in my hearing, as well as all of our friends and family that come by to enjoy a movie, or music.

This is Dolby's layout:

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/home_e...omlayout2.html

The two rear speakers should not be right next to each other.

But THX is different:

http://thx.com/home/setup/speakers/71.html

That isn't what Sanjay is saying.

A stationary sound coming the from the rear center speaker is subject to the "reversal" that has been mentioned....not a panning sound.

Neither is really correct. The truth is pretty much dead between them, if you ignore THX's ridiculous rear dipole channel scheme, anyway.

Have someone speaker from directly behind you. Does it appear to come from in front of you? If not, then it is a matter of setup and quality, not a matter that a single source can't be processed if it's behind you.

What causes miscues for me is asymmetrical rooms with reflective surfaces and/or speakers that are too close to the wall.

It isn't all sounds coming from the rear center.

How do you know it wasn't heard?

Sanjay

That's nice, almost clever.

I'll ask again, since you never answered earlier:

- How do you set up a single rear speaker to avoid the reversal phenomenon? Any specific placement tips (angles, height, etc) would be appreciated. Any supporting documentation (published or not) would be nice too.

- How does 6.1 provide "a better directional surround experience" than 7.1 (i.e., what can 6.1 do that 7.1 cannot)? Again, specifics would be useful. For example: can 6.1 place sound at a location that 7.1 cannot?

- Why would Dolby, DTS and THX all recommend reproducing a mono signal through 2 speakers? And why would the surround-back channel be the only one that they recommend 2 speakers for playback? Why not any of the other channels?
In that case, you must have gotten it from the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

Sanjay

How do you know it was?

Look, we can play this little game going back and forth like this from now till Rapture.

Again, this is about like asking someone how do they know that bigfoot does not in fact exist.