6.1 on a 5.1?

[Lightning Steve]

Just picked up a updated copy of Running Man (it was $5, so what the heck), for sound sellection it had DTS 6.1 or DD ES 5.1. Now I have a 5.1 system, if I'm playing back the DTS 6.1 do I loose the rear center sound, or does it just get divided between the L&R rears? Normally if a movie is in DTS I pick this and it sounds great, but this movie in the DTS didn't sound so good and the DD ES was better. Is it just the movie or because I have a 5.1?

 

[markw]

They get blended into the R/L rear surrounds.

But, if you have preamp outs on your receiver and an old DPL receiver lying around, you can have 6.1

Connect your R/L surround outputs to an input on the DPL receiver.

Disconnect your R/L rear speakers from your 5.1 receiver and connect then to the FRONT R/L speaker outputs of the DPL receiver. These are your R/L rear surrounds.

Connect a speaker to the center channel of your DPL receiver. This is that sixth channel speaker you're wanting.

Adjust the levels to match and you're all set.

 

[MDS]

DTS-ES and DD-EX are matrix formats and the info for the 6th channel is matrixed into the surround channels. If you had a 6.1 receiver capable of decoding those formats, it would extract the 6th channel and send it to the rear speaker. If you only have 5.1, the surrounds play that 6th channel and you don't lose anything.