Whew - this is getting confusing! We listened only to regular CDs. My preferences were straight stereo, then PL II, then DTS Neo 6, If I remember correctly. The preference for straight stereo is strictly a personal thing with me, especially with classical music since I'm used to having the orchestra arrayed in a particular way, with an interplay between sections happening in a way that is more 'natural' and 'continous" for me. The matrix schemes distort this balance for me; PL II is just a bit better at keeping the intent of the original imaging _for me_. Also, with popular music, especially that mastered and mixed in a ProTools (or something similar) enviornment, there are a lot of plug-ins available now that use psyco-acoustic principles to create 'virtual surround' and 'virtual imaging' where instruments can pop up anywhere around the listener, as determined by the person doing the mix. When listened to in anything other than straight stereo, most of these effects are simply steered to the surround speakers, distorting the intent of the artist and or mixer.

Of course, real surround recordings of acoustic music get around all this and capture the ambience and spaciality of the music as it should be. I just wish they would have either eliminated the .1 LFE channel, or made the LFE stereo. In my experience, having a mono sub screws up the imaging of the other speakers unless positioned and set up just-so. Even then, mono bass can't do justice to low frequency instruments like pipe organ. Oh-Oh.....there's that soapbox again (-:

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited October 10, 2002).]