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RE: 5.1 or 7.1?

Posted by David Aiken (A) on January 19, 2008 at 13:22:09

In Reply to: RE: 5.1 or 7.1? posted by Skye on January 18, 2008 at 13:44:21:

It's not that easy.

You need to sit a minimum distance away from a speaker in order for the sound from different drivers to integrate properly so your speaker choice sets some limits on how close you can sit to them. You can place 2 way monitors with only 2 drivers placed close together a lot closer to the listening position than you can a 3 or 4 way floorstander with drivers spread over a much greater vertical distance.

Then you've got the screen size and viewing distance issues which determine where you're going to put the seats.

Finally you've got the question of whether you're setting things up for a single sofa or one row of chairs or whether you've got two or more rows of listeners because you're going to want the rear speakers to be far enough from the rear listeners for them to get a reasonable effect.

I don't know anything about your screen size, viewing distanc, speakers and their best listening distances so I can't say whether 7.1 would work in your room. If you're using a 40-50" plasma and standmount speakers it would probably fit in reasonably well. If you're using a 150" front projection screen it won't because you'd want to sit at least 16-18' from the screen and you'd have difficulty fitting a 5.1 system in if you need to place the speakers some distance from the walls.

Whether or not 7.1 will fit into a particular room depends on a lot of circumstances and you haven't given info on them.

And, even if it will fit, I still wouldn't call it a cost effective upgrade at this point in time even though I think it's a nice upgrade. If all soundtracks were 7.1, then it would start to become cost effective if you had the space.



David Aiken

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