A while ago on another thread, somebody mentioned that when listening to 5.1 material just with the front speakers, the surround track are redirected to the mains.
Yesterday, I was listening to the Police Certifiable concert on Blu ray. There is 2 audio tracks on this BD. 2ch True HD and 5.1 True HD. So I decided to disable the center and compare the 2 tracks playing only with the mains assuming that they would sound the same since all the channels that don't have speakers connected to them should be redirected to the fronts. Well they sound completely different. It looks like when selecting 5.1, the fronts only play whatever they're supposed to play in a 5.1 setup regardless of the other speakers being connected or not.
A simple example is when a listen to the 2 ch track, I hear the crowd screaming. When I listen to the 5.1 track with my 3.0 system I don't. In this particular case, the 2.0 track sounds better than the 5.1 since I don't have surrounds.
Any thoughts?
