leaving matrix 6.1 on, while watching 5.1? (1 Viewer)

[allan espinoza]

i wanted to know if leaving the virtual matrix on non encoded ex or es movies will alter the sound or not? does it sound any different when listening to a 5.1 encoded movie with 6.1 matrix on, can you actually tell the difference? thanks for any info.

 

[Sebastien David]

it will alter the sound.

in my experience, some 5.1 movies will sound better when a 6th surroung back channel is extracted, however most will not. doing what you describe has a tendency to bring the whole rear soundfield to the center. remember, we have a lot less stereo perception for sounds coming from the back.

experiment! it must be said, however, that even 6.1 titles will sound really well in a 5.1 system, if the rear speakers are monopoles (as opposed to di/bipoles or wide-dispertion type speakers), as the imaging is sufficient for smaller rooms. bigger rooms are the ones which benefit the most from the jump to 6.1, discrete or matrix.

 

[RichardMA]

What a person can do is turn off the front channels, and
audition part of the "action" or areas in the movie where
surround is made use of. Try it with and without the
6.1 working to see if the rear soundfield decoding "makes
sense" to your ears. What I found with Apocalypse Now was
that (for eg.) when the helicopters were going across the
rears at the beginning of the movie, the 3 channel (or
4, depending on your setup) worked better. The reason was
that the centre rear provided a more solid "pan" as the
helicopters crossed the rear of the sound stage. Without
the rear centre, it reminded me a bit of using two left
and right fronts and leaving out the centre speaker; In other words, it worked, but the lack of the centre "anchor"
was noticeable.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Another alternative is to look for a sound mode on your receiver/pre pro that is specifically designed to "expand" 5.1 movie sources to accommodate a 6.1/7.1 speaker system. To be honest, I don't know if a lot of current receivers include this or not.

But the new pre/pros by Outlaw and Rotel do. (Don't know about the Anthem.)

 

[DanielSmi]

Another alternative is to look for a sound mode on your receiver/pre pro that is specifically designed to "expand" 5.1 movie sources to accommodate a 6.1/7.1 speaker system. To be honest, I don't know if a lot of current receivers include this or not.

One of the main features of THX Ultra2 is that exact thingit does a pretty good job of it. It takes sound from the surrounds and makes an ambience effect with the back surrounds, but you have to have 7.1 setup to take advantage of this feature I don't think 6.1 will work not sure though.

Daniel Smith

 

[Joe Tilley]

I have the sony DA5ES & I alaways leave the 6.1 decode on. It dose a really nice job with 5.1 titles. Ive turned it off a couple of times to see the differance, but to me it just sounds more balanced with 6ch on.

 

[Stephen Hopkins]

In my experience w/ my Pioneer VSX-D811S, leaving 6.1 on all the time has yielded the best results. DTS 5.1 soundtracks seem to be better for extracting the back channel... it seems to use the same decoding method as for 6.1 matrix material. The DD 5.1 to 6.1 extraction works well too, but the back channel is not as strong from 5.1 sources.