Admittedly, my toys aren't as sophisticated or costly as some of yours, but if there was ever any doubt whether you should upgrade your home theater system from 5.1 to 7.1, my advice is 'not just yet'.
I went through the excersize to add speakers 6 and 7 to my HT setup yesterday, firmly under the impression that all Dolby Digitial TrueHD and DTS-HD would be reproduced as a 7.1 soundtrack. Guess not, most of them (read 99%+) are recorded in a 5.1 format. So far, I have had one disc in hand (X-Men The Last Stand) that had a 6.1 soundtrack, without a really noticeable difference from the 5.1 setup. My RX-V765 Yamaha amp does not allow me to have the new surround speakers to have any sound when the aformentioned audio formats are used, and to some extent, this stands to reason.
To be honest, due to space constraints, I've had to move my surround speakers a bit more forward to be in front of the surround speakers, and this has contributed to an overall worse sound for movies that does not have a soundtrack using the surround back speakers.
I've read about dozens of discs that do have a 7.1 soundtrack, but in four music shops, I've not managed to track one down. Hell, I'm even prepared to buy a drama chick flick, recorded in 8 channels, to experience what 7.1 should be about. No doubt that this will grow, but going through the hassle of new stands, cabling and labour, is just not worth the effort yet.
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I went through the excersize to add speakers 6 and 7 to my HT setup yesterday, firmly under the impression that all Dolby Digitial TrueHD and DTS-HD would be reproduced as a 7.1 soundtrack. Guess not, most of them (read 99%+) are recorded in a 5.1 format. So far, I have had one disc in hand (X-Men The Last Stand) that had a 6.1 soundtrack, without a really noticeable difference from the 5.1 setup. My RX-V765 Yamaha amp does not allow me to have the new surround speakers to have any sound when the aformentioned audio formats are used, and to some extent, this stands to reason.
To be honest, due to space constraints, I've had to move my surround speakers a bit more forward to be in front of the surround speakers, and this has contributed to an overall worse sound for movies that does not have a soundtrack using the surround back speakers.
I've read about dozens of discs that do have a 7.1 soundtrack, but in four music shops, I've not managed to track one down. Hell, I'm even prepared to buy a drama chick flick, recorded in 8 channels, to experience what 7.1 should be about. No doubt that this will grow, but going through the hassle of new stands, cabling and labour, is just not worth the effort yet.
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