7.1 Up & Running!

Woooo! Please let me know if you know of any awesome 7.1 music albums or movies!

I have a couple of BD albums in 7.1 - some percussion thing and the yoga album. I have Hugo, The Hobbit, Brave, Underworld Awakening & Star Wars VII, as far as movies go.

I'm wondering - technically I should move my "surrounds" from 110 degrees further forward to around 90 degrees.
Will this make my 5.1 albums sound weird though? I mean, the 7.1 sounds fantastic with the sides at 110 degrees.
When I put on a 5.1 album, I assume the receiver simply won't play anything out of the rears, so, shouldn't the sides (surrounds) stay where I need them for 5.1?

edisonbaggins said:

Woooo! Please let me know if you know of any awesome 7.1 music albums or movies!

I have a couple of BD albums in 7.1 - some percussion thing and the yoga album. I have Hugo, The Hobbit, Brave, Underworld Awakening & Star Wars VII, as far as movies go.

Click to expand...

you lucky banana! :banana:

Dark City (director's cut) has 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio on it... Never had a chance to listen to the additional 2 speakers, but the 5.1 downmix is good.

The Fifth Element (New remastered from 4K version) (excellent use of 7.1)

Roger Waters The Wall (excellent use of 7.1)

Tron: Legacy (excellent use of 7.1)

Léon: The Professional (new remastered from 4K version) (excellent use of 7.1)

The good/bad news is, my receiver is capable of 9.1 (front left/right height).
I just wonder if there is much in the way out there mixed in 9.1? Or if the receiver sends the front signal out both L/R and the height speakers (upmixes)?
I could use the additional ports for "zone 2" out in the back yard or something like that.

edisonbaggins said:

I'm wondering - technically I should move my "surrounds" from 110 degrees further forward to around 90 degrees.
Will this make my 5.1 albums sound weird though? I mean, the 7.1 sounds fantastic with the sides at 110 degrees.
When I put on a 5.1 album, I assume the receiver simply won't play anything out of the rears, so, shouldn't the sides (surrounds) stay where I need them for 5.1?

Click to expand...

100 degrees for the 5.1's rears always gave me the best results.. you could try that and see how it translates.

edisonbaggins said:

The good/bad news is, my receiver is capable of 9.1 (front left/right height).
I just wonder if there is much in the way out there mixed in 9.1?

Click to expand...

That's basically Dolby Atmos, except it's 7.1.2, so instead of 2 additional rears you get 2 additional heights. I think DTS Neo:X adds 2 additional rears but there is much more media released in Atmos than DTS Neo:X

Roger Water The Wall is in 7.1 Atmos.
Mando Daio's Aelita BDA has 9.1 Auro3D.
Lictmond has a couple of 7.1 DTS-HD blurays

Tiesto Elements of Life is also 9.1 Auro

I'm not very certain, but AIX Records may have some offerings. I have one of their samplers, and the music in it was in 7.1. The sound quality is superb. http://aixrecords.com/index.html

edisonbaggins said:

I'm wondering - technically I should move my "surrounds" from 110 degrees further forward to around 90 degrees.
Will this make my 5.1 albums sound weird though? I mean, the 7.1 sounds fantastic with the sides at 110 degrees.
When I put on a 5.1 album, I assume the receiver simply won't play anything out of the rears, so, shouldn't the sides (surrounds) stay where I need them for 5.1?

Click to expand...

Most 7.1 receivers that I have looked at will duplicate the surround output in the rear speakers. So you should be OK with moving the surrounds to 90 degrees. However, you might want to experiment if possible. For example, I have a 7.1 system but kept my surrounds at 110 degrees. My system did not sound as good when I moved the large, floor standing surrounds to the 90 degree position, so I moved them back to 110 degrees. Hope this helps.

I have a 7.1 and I am very happy with it for both movies and music. I have my rear speakers at 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock. The surround speakers at 10 and 2, the stereo speakers at 11 and 1 and the center at 12. I have discovered that any modern movie that is in 7.1 sounds fantastic.

HomerJAU said:

Roger Water The Wall is in 7.1 Atmos.
Mando Daio's Aelita BDA has 9.1 Auro3D.
Lictmond has a couple of 7.1 DTS-HD blurays

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I have Lichtmond 3 like Homer mentioned, without a doubt the most discrete 7.1 I have. Also Roger's The Wall mentioned, Joe Satriani in Montreal and Chris Botti Live in Boston for BD concerts. I find MOST of the 5.1 music I have plays the same notes through both the sides and rears...but not all. I remember when I first got my 7.2 receiver a few years ago, I only had a 5.1 set up then so had the 2 surrounds set on the rear connection (also play movies, thought the rears would be a better choice). One day I'm playing the 5.1 blu ray of PF's WYWH and had all kinds of music "missing", thought I had a faulty disc or something. But ran it on my son's 5.1 and it was fine. WTH? Once I moved to 7.1 it was okay, that disc wanted the side surround connection to play it all, not the rears. As far as movies go, there's a TON of stuff in 7.1, especially the last 5 years or so. Maybe check out blu ray.com and type in a movie you'd like, it'll come up with codec choices in the description and they'll give you their take on how the audio sounds. A couple I watched of late with excellent 7.1 are Spectre and the older Super 8. Congrats on the new listening experience EB!:upthumb

Last night Hugo sounded simply splendid, darlings.

edisonbaggins said:

technically I should move my "surrounds" from 110 degrees further forward to around 90 degrees.
Will this make my 5.1 albums sound weird though? I mean, the 7.1 sounds fantastic with the sides at 110 degrees.
When I put on a 5.1 album, I assume the receiver simply won't play anything out of the rears ..

Click to expand...

This is up to your preference of course.
The idea of 7.1 is side and back speakers. When you play 5.1 music, a suitable surround mode, like ProLogic IIx Music mode, should split the rear channel in between the back and the side speakers.
For 5.1 movies, you could switch to a movie mode, like ProLogic IIx Movie mode.

edisonbaggins said:

The good/bad news is, my receiver is capable of 9.1 (front left/right height).
I just wonder if there is much in the way out there mixed in 9.1? Or if the receiver sends the front signal out both L/R and the height speakers (upmixes)?
I could use the additional ports for "zone 2" out in the back yard or something like that.

Click to expand...

In Alan Parsons 3 disc documentary, he says, in his opinion that there is really no use for listening greater than 5.1. I trust Alan and I plan on saving a bunch of money.

marpow said:

In Alan Parsons 3 disc documentary, he says, in his opinion that there is really no use for listening greater than 5.1. I trust Alan and I plan on saving a bunch of money.

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Alan is deaf. 7.1 movies sounds fantastic.

Tornado Red said:

I find MOST of the 5.1 music I have plays the same notes through both the sides and rears...but not all. I remember when I first got my 7.2 receiver a few years ago, I only had a 5.1 set up then so had the 2 surrounds set on the rear connection (also play movies, thought the rears would be a better choice). One day I'm playing the 5.1 blu ray of PF's WYWH and had all kinds of music "missing", thought I had a faulty disc or something. But ran it on my son's 5.1 and it was fine. WTH? Once I moved to 7.1 it was okay

Click to expand...

I use the DTS Neural:X setting for some of my music (5.0 and 5.1) which does a reasonable job of synthesising 'different' signals to the rears (like DTS Neo and Pro Logic does for stereo to 5.1). I don't do it for quad only because I want to hear the original recording.

I found your same problem when moving to 7.1. All the quad and 5.1 sound is side channel encoded so I rewired my new rears to be 'sides' and old sides to be 'rears'. I did that because my new speakers are better and with bass down to under 30Hz whereas my original sides are THX limited to 80Hz bass response. Music, any surround, sounds way better now.

My new speakers (now 'sides') are directly opposite the front stereo pair on the floor at about 30 deg and by old sides/now rears remain in their original position high up on my back wall but further apart than the rears. All are calibrated for distance and volume by my Denon.

Actually my main reason to upgrade the amp was to get wireless volume control from my iPad/iPhone and another zone to drive stereo speakers outside. But once I saw the Denon was DTX and Atmos capable then I just had to buy the upgraded rears... So it became an expensive upgrade in the end (Denon AVR X7200WA, B&W 804D and new underfloor cabling)

marpow said:

In Alan Parsons 3 disc documentary, he says, in his opinion that there is really no use for listening greater than 5.1. I trust Alan and I plan on saving a bunch of money.

Click to expand...

Upgrading to 7.1 cost me a whopping $180... And I get slightly bigger front L/R out of it.
Upgrading to 9.1 (7.1.2) would run me a similar figure. Though, I may opt to use those outputs for a Zone 2 outside.