newbie12 wrote:
In reply to:
Curious though - with a front,right,left only setup, does anyone gain any benefit from this for music only - ie do any of the synthetic surround approaches for 2 channel music give any benefits when you have 3 speakers across the front?
My receiver has all sorts of synthetic sound features (e.g. "Hall", "Concert", "Club") and there's something that happens to the sound in 2-channel music, but I only notice any difference while I'm switching modes. So the center speaker doesn't seem to be enough for successful "fake surround" in my setup.
However, my left/center/right speaker positions are rather nonideal. Maybe if they were closer to the recommended positions (ear height, same distance to listening position) then the shaping would improve.
For 5.1 sources, besides the fact that the dialogue gets fixed to the screen with a center channel, the center channel gives you the ability, effectively, to control dialog volume within your receiver. Since the center channel contains mostly dialog and little else, you can adjust its volume to set the dialogue level relative to the sound effects and soundtrack (which are mostly carried by L/R).
Hope this helps. --Martin
