I bought a new front center speaker and am toying with the idea of buying a new mono amp to run the old one as rear center for DTS-ES playback puposes.

Seems there just aren't that many titles encoded this way, so I'm wondering if it's worth the trouble.

Anybody try this? Does the discrete rear center really add that much to the surround sound experience?

There are a few movies out there that offer this surround format: Blade Trinity, Saw SE, Domino, Evil Dead SE, Gladiator, Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition and, most notably, the LOTR Director's Cut Trilogy. That's just a few I own. Here's a link that outlines all the DTS-ES movies:

http://www.spannerworks.net/reference/10_6a.asp

As for the sound? Some movies truly make the most of the added cannel like the LOTR series. Others not as much like Blade Trinity - a very disappointing DTS-ES mix IMO.

I find that most DTS-ES soundtracks are very active and and quite clean (the highs seem a bit more crisp to me for some reason) - bear in mind that this is subjective. There is likely to be a few people out there who feel just the opposite as I do. However, when offered a choice between DTS-ES or DD/DD EX, I choose DTS-ES every time.

Another consideration is that I believe the 970 will matrix the rear surround for any DTS soundtrack to create a pseudo DTS 6.1. The same for DD, it will utilize the rear surround for DD EX formats. In addition, if you own an xbox or xbox 360, I can tell you that many of the games definitely take advatage of the 6.1/7.1 format when its matrixed.

What it really boils down to is whether the production company truly utilizes that rear surround when they master the audio for the disc. Some movies like the LOTR series in DTS-ES really make good use of it. The same could be said for the Star Wars Trilogy (Episodes I, II & III) where the DD EX track is very active as well. I'm happy I made the jump to 6.1/7.1. I thought it was worth the extra money for the additional speakers. I would suggest renting movies first to see which ones stand out to you before buying them for your personal library.

Thanks for the reply Houghers. Another question to you or anyone else knowledgeable with the 970. You said with the 970, the DTS-ES track will be matrixed. Looking at the 970 manual, I do not see an output jack for a rear, center speaker. Therefore, it appears the 970 is not capable of exporting the additional discrete ES information as a separate channel. Is that correct? If so, it may make my earlier question moot, as there is no option to hook up the additional rear speaker. Bummer.

As Houghers points out, in addition to the handful of DTS-ES Discrete discs available (Lord of the Rings EE, Gladiator, and a few others) there are also three matrix decoding modes available in the 970 that can generate surround back data: Pro Logic IIx (which can be used with PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1, and I believe DTS 5.1 as well), DTS NEO:6 (which can be used with DTS 5.1), and Dolby Digital EX (which can be used with Dolby Digital 5.1). To connect a single surround back speaker, you will connect to the left surround back pre-amp output channel and set the 970's surround back to "LB".

Thanks Gonk!

Better to use two speakers behind you, spread well apart. Lots of popular titles use the surround-back channel. A thorough and well updates list can be found here , broken down by all three surround-back encoded formats: DD EX (155 titles), DTS ES (84 titles) and DTS ES Discrete 6.1 (54 titles). Our human hearing is not very good behind our heads, so it doesn't make much difference whether the surround-back channel is discrete or matrix.

When set up properly, it can have noticable advantages: precise rear-vs-side directionality, better wrap-around envelopment, greater imaging stability. There's a limit to what 2 surround speakers can do, which can be easily overcome by using another pair of surrounds.