Will 6.1 / 7.1 amp work on 5.1 set up?

[1974stephen]

HI

I'm thinking about upgrading to a surround sound amplifier and have currently wired for a 5.1 set up. The amplifier I'm thinking about buying is a 7.1 Denon. If I connect the 5.1 speakers to this 7.1 amplifier will it decode to just the 5.1 speakers or will I be missing the centre rear and side information?

Are there settings that be be selected in amplifiers to compensate for this until I possiby upgrade and add the additional speakers to route the centre rear acorss the rear surrounds for example?

Any info greatly recieved.

 

[Luffy]

Hi I cant say for sure with the Denon but I have a Sony 6.1 setup which was originally set up with 5.1 speaker system to which I added an additional speaker. The amp ran just fine and still often runs in 5.1 mode only decoding the extra channel when the sound track on the disc is encoded as 6.1 or higher

 

[1974stephen]

Thanks Luffy - I query though.....

You say it worked fine with the extra speaker added, but before you had the extra rear speaker if you listened to a 6.1 DVD where did the audio dsigned to go to the rear centre go?

Did it go equally to the rear L&R of did you just not hear it at all?