have any of you guys heard a home theater set up with two speakers taking care of the rear surround channel. I have noticed some recievers allow you to split the rea in a 6.1 setup with the 6th channel's power into two speakers. It seems like it would be a bit more enveloping but would the volume and sound not match correctly because say a sound is traveling around the surrounds and it goes from the left surround powered at say 100w then to the left back surround say powered at 50w than the right back powered at 50w then the right surround powered at 100w. It sounds like there would be a huge difference but I'm wondering if any of you guys have heard a setup like this. Is it better to just have one speaker for the rear back?

7.1 receivers all have amplifiers for both back channels. The DSP uses one of several algorithms to break the sixth channel into two seperate (though not discrete) channels based on the actions of the two side surrounds. The power is not split between them.

However, I haven't built my setup yet so I can't comment on how exactly this sounds.

I know that 7.1 receivers like teh onkyo and the denon plus others supply equal power, but in some 6.1 receivers Pioneer VSX-811s and Denon 1803? they give the option of hooking up two speakers, or one with the power of the sixth channel powering both speakers. I think thats how it works at least thats what I've read in the descriptions of recievers at Crutchfield among other places.

I think those are actually multi-zone connectors. You wouldn't run both at the same time. They're in case you want a different speaker config for different types of sources. For instance, you could place two speakers identical to your fronts on the 2 zone two channels and dipoles on your regular surrounds. If you put in a video DVD, you could then have the traditional 5.1 setup and you could switch to having four identical speakers at each corner while listening to DVD-A, which is how DVD-A is mixed.

You may be able to put two speakers on those two connectors and split the power (not sure how the non-7.1 receivers from Denon handle this) but there wouldn't be much point.

Alright here is an excerpt from Crutchfield.com about the Pioneer VSX-811s and the whole two speakers for back surrounds
"This receiver even has two back surround speaker terminals, so if you want to add a pair of speakers, you can share the sixth-channel power between the pair."
So this is definetly a 6.1 setup for hometheater, its not a 7.1 reciever its rated 6channels by 100watts. Its not an extra terminal from the B speakers its an extra back surround terminal. Has anyone heard a system with this setup.

I have a Denon 3802 and it has seperate Amps for each channel. I am running a 7.1 and it sounds great.

6.1 or 7.1? In a small room I would suspect a 6.1 would sound as good as a 7.1. As you room size increases the better the 2nd rear would sound.

I'm running:
M60 Mains
VP150 Center
QS8 Surrounds
JBL N24 Back Surrounds
SVS PCI 25/31 Sub