[Anton]

Hello,

I have a Pioneer DVD-Audio/SACD Amp and one of the Surround feature options is "5 Channel Stereo" which sounds preety good. I notice the Music becomes louder and evenly spaced between channels! I dont think their is any front or Rear to this?

Question is, whats the difference between Dolby Prologic II
(Music) and 5 channel Stereo?

Is 5 channel stereo the equivalent of having 2 sets of stereo channels (A & B) playing at the same time, with addition of center channel?

Do other brands carry 5 or 6 channel "Stereo" ?

Appreciate your advise,
Anton

[gene c]

H/K and Onkyo also have it and I'm sure others do as well. I'm not sure it's the same as A+B plus a center channel though. Although you would think it was by the name. There just dosn't seem to be as much coming out of the surrounds as there is from the fronts and center. Maybe that's because my surrounds are much smaller than the others. Anyway, I like it because sometimes Pro-Logic and the like don't do such a good job of seperating some songs. There is too much coming from the center and hardly anything from the fronts and rears. When I switch to 5 channel stereo, the room seems to be filled with music. Turning off the center channel and listening to "4 channel stereo" sometimes sounds better as well. I do wish my H/K had an A/B switch though. Oh well. Gene

[FeisalK]

Quote:

Turning off the center channel and listening to "4 channel stereo" sometimes sounds better as well.

Yamaha's surround stereo DSP mode does this auto (i.e. no center channel) .. well at least on my old 595a. It sounds great, I just wish they hadn't called it "disco"

[Chet_F]

My Onkyo has 5 channel stereo. It uses all 5 speakers. Rear left/front left output the left channel. Rear right/front right output the right channel. Center channel also outputs sound. I do not know what it outputs though. I would assume it is some type of stereo downmix since the center speaker only 1 speaker? Don't know though. I also believe that the sub is being used during the 5 channel stereo mode.

[Marvin]

Quote:

Is 5 channel stereo the equivalent of having 2 sets of stereo channels (A & B) playing at the same time, with addition of center channel?

Yes. My receiver (Denon) also has this. The center speaker plays a mono signal and the other 4 speakers play in stereo. This isn't the same as DPL II. I'm not exactly sure what that is but as I understand it, the rear speakers do not play the same signal as the fronts. My receiver has a DSP mode called "matrix" which may be similar to DPL II but since my receiver doesn't have DPL II, I can't compare them.

[Kenny_H]

My Denon AVR-2803 has both 5 Channel Stereo and Dolby Pro Logic II (along w/ DTS NEO 6 cinema & music). From 2 channel sources, in the 5 channel mode, a noticeable amount of low end extention is added. In Dolby Pro Logic 2, less bass is noticed. DolbyPro Logic II is mainly an improvement over Dolby Pro Logic. In a way, having more selections on how you listen to the various sources, may improve how much you enjoy them with a 5-6 channel setup.

[John Geelan]

My DENON 3300 has it and I do use it often when I listen to a Stereo recording. I like the spaciousness of the sound.

[Marvin]

For those people whose receivers have both DPLII and Matrix DSP mode, how do they compare? Is there another DSP mode that sounds closer to DPLII?

[Ted Lee]

dpl2 is designed to simulate a surround-sound experience from 2-ch recordings. it works better then dpl1 in that respect. you can't really use dpl1 for stereo recordings because (as already mentioned) too much emphasis is put into the center speaker. you essentially turn a stereo-signal into a mono-one!

i always thought 5-ch was the same signal being sent to all 5 channels - kinda like running a mono-signal to each speaker? guess not...

btw - here is a good, if slightly old, article on dpl2.