I don't see it as contradictory at all -- the living room at my old house wasn't very big, but the way it was laid out I had the couch perpendicular to the long axis and about nine feet from the rear wall. It was a narrow enough space that it didn't lend itself to 7.1, but I was able to get a pretty nice 6.1 arrangement working because of the distance from rear wall to seating position.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

Obviously the room wasn't all that small. It really depends on the arrangement of the room. For some it just doesn't add much. Actually, that statement does help. gonk went with 6.1 instead of 7.1 because the room wasn't large enough to warrant it.

hopefully no one is in a tiny little theatre room with 7.1. you shouldnt nit pick, large or small, but just know that adequate space is needed for better seperation of channels.

I think curegeorg's third post in this thread hit on the key factor for deciding if moving up from 5.1 is worthwhile: distance between surround speakers. If you identify the best locations in the room for the sixth or sixth and seventh speakers and find that the surrounds are ending up clustered together to the point where it just looks sort of odd (i.e. a speaker every couple of feet across the back of the room), it's typically not going to be worthwhile.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

Example, a monstrosity such as this . Yes it's a computer system, but that helps with the point of spacial arrangement. Who really puts their computer speakers more than like 3-5 ft away? I have a 5.1 setup spread a little around the room and it's borderline as to whether the center channel is really needed. Like we're kind of coming to. There should be a gap to fill before you try to fill it.

[This message has been edited by JT Clark (edited May 17, 2004).]

The only reason I mentioned room size vs seating location is because I didn't want the original poster to automatically assume that his room was too small for a 7.1 set-up. Besides, the point of adding surround-back channels is to have rear vs side localization in the surround field and to fill the sonic hole behind listeners that occurs with traditional side placement of the surrounds.

As I mentioned earlier, I've seen large rooms that were poor candidates for 7.1 because the couch was against the back wall. Likewise, I've seen small rooms that were able to pull of 7.1 very well: a friend of mine converted a spare bedroom into a recording studio. All 7 speakers were a little further than arms length away (TDL nearfield monitors). Since they were nowhere near the room boundries, the imaging was superb.

So, irrespective of room size, seating location is the important factor in determining whether a room is a good candidate for 7.1 or not.

As for distance between the two pairs of surround speakers; it's a balancing act. You want side vs rear separation for distinct localization when watching movies; but you also want side and rear blending for better envelopment when listening to music. Requires listening and experimentation, but the results are worth it.

Best,
Sanjay

as i posted earlier, you can achieve a lot by using bi-pole/di-pole speakers as your 4th and 5th, a lot of times, so much so that 6th and 7th are not that noticeable (unless you have a lot of space between the 2 sets). dont, you, draw me into posting anymore on this topic. lol

Does it matter if the surrounds are bi-amped or not?

I think Jeff's reply was very common sense. One can debate endlessly about some things, as JT, tongue-in-cheek, might have us do based on his last remark, but if you have access to or can borrow another one or two speakers, even relatively inexpensive ones, for a test, you can experiment to find out whether 6.1 or 7.1 makes a difference to you in your setting. Not to put anyone's opinion down, but the debate is largely moot.

yes largely, for large rooms, completely for small ones.