Originally posted by WormGod
7.1 is the enhanced virtual NEO/MATRIX advertised in many recievers.
Yeah, I've got a 7.1 setup with bohlender-graebener 520's all around with aragon amps, palladiums on the front three. But the difference is like 4 wheel drive vs 2 wheel drive. Both cars have 4 tires, but 2 wheel drive only moves two wheels and the other two are just "pushed along" by the wheels with real connections to a drive-shaft. With a 7.1 setup, you got all 7 speakers, but there's only 5 actual channels of sound, the other two just get "pushed" along by some derivative of the audio in the 5 real channels.

At least that is the way it is with dolby digital. DTS has a 6.1 with DTS-ES (not DTS-EX which is matrixed just like Dolby EX) but even that is just 6, not 7 actual discrete channels and HDTV signals are not able to carry DTS audio of any sort, the ATSC standard does not have any provision for it at all, just AC3, AAC and MPEG2 audio.

Video games on a PC with a 7.1 sound card can potentially drive all 7 speakers independently, although it is a lot more rare than you might think (I was very disappointed to find that only the 7.1 soundblasters can do that with their EAX-HD and possibly their Directsound3D support, all the other cards just matrix out the 6th and 7th channels from 5 or less discrete ones, just like Dolby-EX).



Also, if you just got a new tv and/or sound system center, look into this product....

AVIA

Very easy to use audio/visual configuration disk that works right through a DVD player. A tad pricey for a DVD, but well worth it for proper installment of your home system.
AVIA is very useful for DVD playback, but not as great for HDTV. It does depend on how much of a videophile you are.

Two problems with AVIA for HDTV - first the resolution of the test patterns are all DVD-res (of course, since it is a DVD) and second and much more obscurely, the colorspace for DVD is different than the colorspace for HDTV. I don't know WTF they were thinking when they did that, but the result is that a system properly set-up for DVD will have colors that are slightly "off" when displaying HDTV material. You may never notice it unless you have a correct HDTV setup side-by-side with a DVD-tuned setup, both playing HDTV.

There is an option, but it is way too expensive for most people - Video Essentials (who also make a DVD competitor to AVIA) have a DVHS version of their product that is for HDTV. But it is priced at $90, not like the DVDs are. And you gotta have a DVHS deck which is probably dead-end technology. But, if you are video-freak you may already have such a deck, or two.

By the way, Guy Kuo, the author of the AVIA DVD, is a regular at those avsforums that I mentioned previously, although I haven't seen him post recently, but the place is so busy it is easy to miss a lot of posts if you are just casually browsing. A friend of mine, whom I turned on to the benefits of a front-projector system, bought a used projector that Guy had personally modified for better contrast. It's weird how the net can make the world really small like that.