Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater EP175 big enough?

I think you may have just created a catch phrase to end all catch phrases!!!

Ok well, I have decided to definately go with a sub, just deciding which.

I am really tempted to just go ahead and buy the 6 and 7 channels as well, but actually looking into what is out there in 7.1, it's not much. Only about 10% of Blu-Ray so far is in lossless 7.1, really not much bang for your buck there.

Potatohead, you're certainly right, very few titles are 7.1, but that isn't to say you wouldn't appreciate a 7.1 system more then 5.1 just because you aren't getting discreet sound to all speakers. Depending on the size of your room, adding the two more channels will just fill out your sound stage so to speak and give you a more encompassing experience, I'd still consider it if it is in the budget. We recently did my fathers basement theatre over and started with 5.1, but with the size of the room, things just sounded a little empty in the sides and rear, adding two more speakers just really filled the space up better.

Mr. Potatohead - like roar says moving from 5.1 to 7.1 is IMO very room dependent with larger rooms usually benefiting more. Additionally I also thinks it helps more if you have multiple rows of seating.

Also I’ve found that the QS8s do a great job as rear speakers especially when seating is close but the further away the back wall the more I prefer my M22s as rear speakers. Keep that in mind if your room is deep since you could upgrade to 7.1 for a lot less money by getting M22 or M2 rears. As always YMMV.

My room is 19' deep x 13' wide. The couch will be at about 15' back, so about 4' from the back wall. I plan on mounting the side QS8's about 6" - 1' behind the couch on the side walls. Because of the door on the back wall, I am unable to place the 6 and 7 channel speakers any more than 20" in from the side walls, so they'll be about 9' apart. If I could place them more towards the center I would probably go with W2's, but since they would be more spread out I would probably be better with a Q series speaker I think (unfortunately)... Unless the couch being 4' off the back wall will allow the W2's enough room to disperse the sound... I am not sure on that.

What kind of program does a receiver use to change 5.1 to 7.1 anyway? I know there is ProLogic IIx but I thought that was for stereo source only. If you are bitstreaming lossless 5.1 to the receiver, how do you get it to output 7.1?

I know from experience that PLIIx will convert 2.0, 3.0 5.1 to 7.1. John is our resident expert on it but AFAIR it only extracts ambient sounds and sends them to the extra channels. I didn’t catch what type of receiver you have but there should be a selection to have it apply PLIIx to any digital source.

If you only have 4 feet behind your seating I would stick with QS speakers for rears if you choose to go with rear speakers. Just to get some idea of how it will sound if you have a couple old speakers laying around hook them up and place them where you would for 7.1 and have a listen. Won’t be exact but it might give you an idea how much it will help.

Based on your room description I think you might benefit from rear speakers. You don’t have much room behind you for the rear soundstage to develop from the surrounds but do have just enough room for rear speakers to fill in the rear soundstage.


BTW my room is almost the same size 21 x 13.5

If you're using Audyssey, I believe it detects the additional back speakers automatically, doesn't it? I'm running 5.1 so I'm not positive on this, otherwise if you do it manually you have to go through the 'speaker setup/configuration' and have to change the 'Amp Assign' from 'Zone 2' to 'Main Zone' and '7.1' from what I can decipher from THE Denon Manual.

Receiver will be a Denon 1910

I will try the Audyssey but if it's anything like the setup my old Onkyo did in my old place, I'll be editing half of it anyway.

In short though, if you tell the receiver you are using all 7 channels, it will matrix 7.1 content on virtually everything but stereo?

Lastly, as stated, I have QS8's for the sides. Should I use QS8's for the rears as well, or will QS4's do fine? I'm thinking the 4's have to be a nice upgrade from a W2, and I might not gain much from the 8's with my setup.

Thanks again guys, this forum is so helpful.

Not sure if your Denon works the same as my 2807 but you don’t have to use Audyssey. You run the auto setup and then just turn Audyssey off. Personally I find it’s faster just to grab a tape measurer.

You can just go into the Denons setup menu and tell it if you have rear speakers. It should allow you to select between none, one or two.

Dolby PLIIx will only pull out matrixed information if it’s recorded that way. It will also pull out ambient sounds even in non matrixed 2.0 and feed it to the side and rear speakers. How well this works depends on how much ambient sound is present on the recording.

I think the QS4 would do fine. Personally I think 7.1 is overrated especially if your using QS8 surrounds but for some people it seem to work really well. But then I don’t like Audyssey either so what do I know.