http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/receivers/yamaha-rx-z11-first-look

What's everyone thinking of the specs on this 11.2 behemoth receiver? I'm interested in the idea of "Presence" speakers. I remember someone posting a picture of their setup with speakers like that in the front. How many people are actually running a setup like that? Can anyone link to any intelligent non-marketing articles detailing the benefits of these additional speakers? If Axiom was smart, they'd include these extra channels in their pre/pro so they can sell more speakers.

Yamaha has been doing front presence on and off since the mid to late 80's. Although back then, there was only Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro-Logic. Gotta give them credit for sticking with it for almost 20 years.

I seem to remember Dolby demoing Dolby Digital Plus (I think) a long while ago, well before it was in a consumer product, and it ranged from 7.1 to 14.1. Does anyone know what locations the speakers were in in the 14.1 configuration?

Also, why am I up right now? On my new schedule, I shouldn't be awake for another 4 hours. Ha ha.

11.2??? I would have thought that with that many speakers, they would go for dual center channel speakers since there seems to be some open wall space above the screen to play another speaker.
Then it would have been 12.2...

Here is the picture, hi-jacked from the link above for those people that just want to see an 11.2 setup...

I have a Yammy RXV-659 with Presence Speaker output - but it's more commonly used as a second powered zone.