7.1 setup advice needed

[kendisred]

hi all,
i have a 7.1 speaker setup , what i want to know is ...if i watch a dolby digital dvd.. example matrix .. it shows dolby digital ex in amp display..if i press surround on remote and show pl11x movie would this create 7.1 even though the disc is dolby digital ..any advice would be helpful

[sb09]

Yes it would! It's the 'x' in PLIIx which tells you that it's formatted or matrixed to 7.1. PLIIx is for 7.1 only, 5.1 would only show up as PLII, and as it's a Dolby format, it'll work perfectly!

[kendisred]

cheers thanx for that

[sb09]

No worries. You won't get 7.1 discrete channels, you'll get 5.1 discrete with two added matrixed channels to the rears, though your first post seems to suggest you were already getting 6.1 discrete if Dolby Digital Ex was showing on the amp.

This means the same discrete rear channel audio will be played through both rear speakers taking it from 6.1 to 7.1. Currently at work, so can't see (and can't remember) what audio formats are available on the Matrix.

[missinglink]

Dolby Digital Ex is not discrete 6.1. Only DTS brought out a fully discrete 6.1 mix called DTS discrete 6.1!

Both Dolby and DTS had rival matrixed 6.1 mixes called
Dolby Digital EX (6.1) and DTS-ES (6.1).

These still exist for standard DVD, but of course High Def video has enabled the use of 6.1 and 7.1 discrete channels.

[sb09]

missinglink,

Many thanks for tidying up/correcting what I was trying to say to kendisred above.