Interesting!

That all makes lots of sense.

I think that's what is really the bugger; you come to understand what a standard is supposed to be, and what it's doing and is capable of, and then they go and relabel it or change it slightly so it behaves differently! LOL.

I guess it's just a little unsettling until one KNOWS for SURE what the unit is doing; to see it show EX or ES on the display, when you KNOW you've told it that you don't have those speakers wired or designated. One instantly wonders, 'is the audio really being processed properly for those channels?' (ie, intentionally not 'pulled out' of the surrounds in EX, or intentionally matrixed back into the surrounds in ES, if I'm understanding what you're saying)

I also just realized, my test may not be wholy authoritative, because if the processor shuts down output to the pre outs for the surround back (since I designated them as NONE) it's still feasible that it's not processing the stream properly. (opposite of described above, in that it, 'intentionally pulls out the extra audio from the surrounds in EX mode' or 'intentionally does not matrix the 6th channel back into the surrounds in ES mode') I.E., the data could just be 'lost'. I guess I'd need a test disc with discrete test tones on ONLY those channels to see where the audio all 'went'.

E.