I just found out about this device and I'm intrigued. I'm not sure if this is the right thread to ask these questions, but you guys seem to to be the right audience in any case.
I just happen to have a 7.1 input mode on my Marantz 7012 that aren't being used. I have three rows of seats (well the last row is one seat) and I already use active mixers to add front wides and surround#1 (along with Pro Logic Center extraction for "Scatmos" Top Middle (also used for Auro-3D "Surround Height" via 2-in,2-out Monoprice switchbox that lets me swap rear height to side height or copy it or use the extracted "center" between as top middle).
What I'm getting at is given my 11.1.6 layout, if I bought one of these units, would I likely be better off connecting the surround outputs to my side surrounds (which are at around 110 degrees behind me), but my MLP is a bit closer to them than my mains (6.5' to sides versus 8' to mains) or routing to the rear surrounds (they're about 10 feet behind me) for quadraphonic playback? There's also the option to use the mixed front wides and surround#1 speakers which act as a summed array in each case and are level tuned to make the side surrounds phantom image to my sides instead of behind me with a straight signal (but also aids in smooth panning around the entire 24' long room). I could get splitters and send the "sides" to both the sides and rear channels and I'd end up with a multi-channel speaker array of front wides + sides + surround#1 + rears for the surround output.
Lest the front channels feel left out, I also mix L/C/R to the front heights as a "dialog lift" feature (so it sounds like it's coming out of the screen instead of under it across the front stage) and the front wides also get the L/R mains to some degree. Thus, my "stereo" mode (without the amps defeated) is actually already a 6.1 arrayed mode and with the mixer delays not being accounted for, the slight difference in sound arrivals tends to give stereo mode a more "bipole/dipole" like ambience (my upstairs 2-channel system consists of Carver AL-III dipole ribbons with a bi-amped active custom crossover system designed for the AL-III by a former Carver engineer and is driven by a Carver C-5 Sonic Hologram Pre-amp). Yeah, I made it a bit complex, but the Auro-3D and Atmos and X soundtracks move around the room smoothly on both ear-level and ceiling-level planes and voices no longer come from below the screen as did when the room was 6.1 only with a 720p projector and even the off-axis seats get phantom surround around them instead of diagonally through them with the extra summed mixer speakers.
Needless to say, I'm used to some pretty ambient mains upstairs and my 6-channel approximation downstairs is the first time the PSB speakers there reminded me of the Carvers. It also theoretically acts as a partial line source below around 230Hz or so. I typically get up to around 90 degree to my sides imaging with some albums in stereo mode without any side surrounds (on both systems, but the Carvers need Sonic Holography turned on for it to happen there; the PSBs do it with just the 6-speaker array, all in front of the first row). An album like
Amused To Death by Roger Waters with Q-Sound images virtually identical to the newer 5.1 discrete mix, but I think the stereo version has more "punch" to it and I prefer the original songs to the ones that were modified. I'd be curious to try something like Pink Floyd's Animals album through the unit as it never got a quadraphonic mix, unlike DSOTM and WYWH (and the version Roger mentioned hasn't yet materialized, presumably do to disagreements with David or whatever).
I'm certain I could play around with which setup might work best (certainly extending a copy to the sides and rears would probably give at least the 2nd row of seats an interesting experience too), but I'd be curious to what more experienced people think would happen in my setup.
Here's a 360-type rotating set of pictures of my room layout (not completely up-to-date, but that's mostly in terms of the movie prop decorations). There's 3 chairs in the front row (about 8.5' from the mains, 2 in the 2nd row about 14 feet from the mains and one in the 3rd row about 18 feet from the mains).
Rotating View standing in front of front row:
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Front Row:
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Carver AL-III System Upstairs:
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