Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater QS8's and M2i's arrived!

I remember seeing a big long-winded post by somebody on AVS or HT forum describing the science of it. He may have been blowing hot air, but he did say that studies have been done (though they were older - back to the to the 70/80s) that concluded that ears don't process sound the same way from the rear as they do from the front (that evolution thing). According to the 'experts' 2 rear speakers (spread apart a bit) created a more effective sound field. At least that is an extremely condensed version, and I don't recall the exact argument for it. So take it for what it's worth.

I would assume one of the reasons for discrete amps for the back surrounds is to allow for calibrating the speaker level based upon where it is positioned in the room. Otherwise, you could theoretically run two speakers off the same back surround channel.

Even though I only use one of the two available on my AVR, both have individual speaker gain adjustments to allow for room dynamics and weird speaker placements. If I had a wider room I'd probably get another QS8 and go for it just to impress my friends :-) However having two speakers about 2 feet apart wouldn't seem to provide any additional soundstage for the back at this time - so one is fine for now...

Cheers,

Doug

Scott's(sidvicious)recollection is about right. For some strange psychoacoustic reason, it's been shown that on some occasions when only a single rear center surround speaker is used, a "reversal" occurs in which a sound that should be directly in back appears to come from directly in front. Using two separated back surrounds avoids this possibility.

Ken, the 7th amp isn't really just for future-proofing. For example, on your 525 you can program the 6th and 7th amps to power speakers in another room instead of back surrounds. Also, although a 6th amp can be used to power two back surround speakers(there's no "real" 7th channel involved, and except for some special processors the 7th speaker gets the same signal as the 6th), using the 7th amp makes for an easier load, especially if the two back surrounds would be low impedance speakers being driven in parallel by the 6th amp.