Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Review: Finally replaced m22 surrounds with QS8's.

...and you get to define "necessary", right?

Sweet.

Just last year I bought a couple of M2's to serve as the rear surrounds in my 7.1 set-up. I thought that 4 QS8's would be overkill and when someone suggested M2's I jumped at that scenario. I'm glad I did. The rear surrounds do make a difference in certain scenes, and 7.1 Blu-ray disks like 3:10 to Yuma are amazing. One scene during the stagecoach robbery has a bullet travel from the right main and ricochet from the left QS8 to the rear M2. Once you hear a good 7.1 set-up, you won't go back.

My room is only 12 feet wide with the qs8's on the side walls. I was considering 2 m2's as rear surrounds but was thinking that my room is two narrow to really make good use of them. How wide is your room? Also, in a 7.1 setup should you move your qs8's from slightly behind the listening position to right at the side of the listening position to take advantage of the m2's as rear surrounds?

- Nick

My room is 13.5 feet wide and I have the QS8's positioned beside the listening position. The QS8's are wall mounted and the M2's are hung from the ceiling. I've found that the direct radiating M2's as rears complement the QS8's perfectly.

Of course!

The only concern I have with putting the surrounds right next to the listening position is that most dvd's are 5.1 rather than 6.1 or 7.1. So when I am using 5.1, the surrounds will be not in the optimal position (ie a couple feet above and behind the sweet spot). However, there is an option to extend 5.1 to a processed 6.1 for regular dvd's (using dts neo 6 or dolby pxl II?). But, are there options such as these on newer receivers with the new audio codecs such as dolby true hd? What is mean is can I extend dolby true hd 5.1 to 6.1 with some processing on the new recievers while keeping it uncompressed? Also, what if I have uncompressed 5.1 pcm...Is there a way to extend this to 6.1 without downconverting it to lossy first?

- Nick

I have a new Denon AVR-3808CI--great, great receiver. With the Audessey calibration it knows where I sit and how many speakers I have. It'll convert 5.1 to 6.1 or 7.1 with no problem, if that's what you mean.

When using native 5.1 source, you can use Dolby EX to extend signal to 6.1 or 7.1 without touching the front channels.

But, what about the new high def formats. If I have 5.1 pcm uncompressed (or dolby true hd or dts master audio) is it possible to convert it to 6.1 or 7.1 inside of the receiver (or blu ray player) and still keep it lossless?

It's all converted to PCM before any of the DSP problems and chips are applied (including bass management). So, whether the source was lossy or not, those portions of your receiver will not see the diffence (but your ears just might!)