Upgrading from 5.1: Is it really worth it? (1 Viewer)

[Nick.H]

Howdy,

I've currently got a 5.1 system and with the redesign of my HT room, I can now have a rear speaker. The question is, Is it really worth it? Considering most DVD's are only 5.1, What would a rear center provide? better surround sound? My receiver is 7.1, So for 6.1 mode will it take parts of the sound it would normally put on the rear speakers and put it through the rear center speaker?


What do you have? 5.1 or 6.1 or 7.1?

 

[Jesse Sharrow]

There is not true 7.1 recordings out right now anyways. So when you have 7.1 it is just 6.1 anyways, just mono in the rears.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

It really depends on your system and what other upgrade options you might have. Perhaps you could list more information, since there are a lot of things that you might want to improve, such as room acoustics, or bass performance, or PQ, or more music and DVDs, or better mains, or whatever, rather than just adding more speakers, which may not be the best route of improvement. And if you put extra crummy speakers back there in an otherwise top-notch system you might make things worse.

So more info?

 

[Nick.H]

Well this is my current setup.



And I was thinking of adding the rear centre, just wondering if it will make a diffrence? Will the surround sound better?

It would be a quality rear centre as all my speakers are.

 

[Edward J M]

Add two rear surrounds behind the seating position and move the side surrounds to the side walls.

There are plenty of DD-EX, DTS-ES, and DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete DVDs out there to make excellent use of rear surrounds.

Furthermore, any decent 7.1 AVR can apply matrix processing to any 5.1 DVD and redirect sounds to the rear speakers. So you will benefit from it on every DVD you watch.

And two rear surrounds give a larger and more solid sound stage than one in the middle.

 

[Nick.H]

Okay, but my L/R Surrounds at the moment are just normal speakers, not Dipole/bipole. Will it still work? I called them surround, but they are just rear speakers. Hopefully I didn't confuse you? They are just a smaller version of my main speakers. So they would be very directional.

Should it be like so?

 

[Edward J M]

Direct radiating will work fine. Many people use them with success at all surround locations.

I don't know if your diagram is to scale, but if possible I would move the seating position and the side surrounds a bit closer to the TV, and spread the front surrounds a bit wider.

This will make the front/side/rear surround placement a bit more symmetrical instead of so heavily weighted to the rear. Panning effects will be more seamless without a drop-out between the front and sides.

7.1 is a GREAT upgrade; after a while you'll be so used to a solid rear sound stage and seamless panning front/side/rear you'll wonder how you lived without it. Nothing like hearing the cave troll snort right behind you, and also hearing his chain whip completely around the room in LOTR-FOTR DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete.