Thinking of going to 7.1 from 5.1...worth it?

Domingo

Domingo

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More and more I'm noticing games (and the new consoles) pushing a 7.1 speaker setup rather than the more traditional 5.1.

Seems easy enough to buy 2 more speakers, but in my basement it'll be kind of tricky to run the wires and wall-mount the additional speakers. My best bet is going to involve going under carpet and probably in and out of a wall. Did I mention I'm not that handy?

I've been rocking a 5.1 setup going all the way back to the late 90's and have never really felt it was missing anything. For those who have used both, especially for gaming, what's your take?
 
I have a 7.1 setup in my media room and my take is that I wouldn't go *back* to 5.1 if I didn't have to; however the addition of the extra channels isn't necessarily mindblowing as it would be going from a 2.1 (or 3.1) setup to 5.1. It definately adds to the immersion experience, assuming you've got things calibrated properly, etc.

I'd say definately go for it since you already have the rest of the setup. It doesn't sound like you're in a situation of having to sacrafice quality for quantity of channels which is the usual dilemma; try and stay with the same line of speakers as your other channels if you can.

If it's not exactly trivial to run wiring, you could always demo a pair of speakers and run the wires directly and test it out and see if you think it's worth the time and effort.
 
OP: Describe your room (size, positioning of gear and seating, any large furniture, does it have any open walls that lead to other areas w/o a door, etc.) and we can tell you if it's a candidate for 7.1. Also, what are your current speakers / other gear?

In general, 7.1 is not much of an improvement over 5.1.
 
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My setup is in my basement. It's wide, but not very long. Roughly 15 feet from the back wall to the front. My speakers are all Polk audios that I bought for 75% off when Circuit City was closing. Good, but certainly not great.
There's actually a picture of it here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1122338&page=81
Out of view is my couch with two tall Samsung speakers off to the side of it. It's nearly against the wall, so the rear speakers would be behind/above me, but only about 2 feet away.
I was looking at buying a pair of Polk rear speakers on amazon that would be mounted. Otherwise, there really isn't a ton of room, although I could probably move my couch up a food or two.
Any clue if it's worth my time? I don't have any spares but I could potentially borrow some rears from a friend to test it out temporarily.
 
Personally I would say not worth it with the couch like that..

If you do it, however, could you possibly use in-wall speakers? I think even the few inches of speaker depth that they save will help the sound. Otherwise I recommend bipolar speakers to help with dispersion. Note: Not dipoles (unless they have a switch for bipolar mode - many do). Make sure to turn the channels way down in volume.
 
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I have my room set up for 7.1 but took the back 2 off and made them zone 2 for music playback with the projector off...

they get more use as stereo music speakers rather than rear channels in a 7.1 system IMO
 
I'd love to go with in-wall speakers, but something tells me I'd end up destroying my walls or making a royal mess getting something like that set-up.
Anyone have experience with professional installation? What kind of $ would I be looking at? Those Polk on-wall speakers on Amazon are only $100 for a pair, so I'm doing this with at least a little thrift in mind.
 
Depends on the room... where the speakers are and where the speaker wire would need to be run to and how easy it is to run wire through the room. For example - I forget the term in carpentry but some houses have horizontal reinforcements between the vertical wall studs which makes running wire hard. That would obviously increase the amount of work needing to be done significantly. If there are no such reinforcements then the only difficulty of running the wire is physically getting it from Point A to Point B. Fish tape helps.

If the wire isn't too difficult to run, I'd guess a couple hundred bucks for installation.

Personally I think it's easy to DIY for the most part, but if you really don't feel comfortable then, honestly, I couldn't tell you if the in-walls might be worth the cost of installation to you. All I can tell you is I wouldn't bother with on-walls right behind my head. In your case, I probably would stick with 5.1.
 
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I'm starting to think that might be the better bet for now. If I do it, I'll probably have to re-arrange things a bit no matter what.
 
I will put in another vote for sticking with 5.1. It just would not be worth the hassle and money to me in the room configuration you have.
 
If your receiver is capable of running height channels (PLIIz) it's worth looking into. I opted for PLIIz over PLIIx on my setup. I love the sense of depth you get from it.
 
I have a very large room with a 7.1 setup. I really don't think it's worth it. Not unless you have a large room, great speakers and are watching something with a DTS-MA HD/TrueHD track.

For gaming I wouldn't bother at all.
 
I upgraded to 7.1 a couple of years ago. I have a 14'x14' room with non-optimal speaker placement, and I honestly don't care for the 2 extra speakers. It doesn't add much over 5.1 to me.

I went in search 7.1 enabled blurays a while back, too -- sounds good, but I can't tell the difference between 7.1 and 5.1 on the stuff I've tried.
 
Yeah, I would say 7.1 is mostly useful for dedicated theaters with multiple rows of seating. Otherwise much of the time you'll see more mileage from a good set of dipole surround speakers over making sacrifices to get 7.1.
 
I went with a 7.2 setup in my movie theater, 2 rows of 6. With the Stereo calibrated it was well worth it!!! Movies made for 7.1 sound superior vs 5.1.
 
Marcdaddy said:
I went with a 7.2 setup in my movie theater, 2 rows of 6. With the Stereo calibrated it was well worth it!!! Movies made for 7.1 sound superior vs 5.1.
Click to expand...

In a relatively large room like yours I can see 7.1 making sense.
 
I ended up getting those speakers as a gift (go figure) and hooked 'em up last week. I ended up putting them on the wall behind the couch and angled down.
Pretty interesting as they do sound nice, but I'm noticing that 5.1 sources seem confused with to do with the surround speakers. Most of the time they send it to the back, other times it's a mix with the sides...and other times it's really faint and comes out of both.
 
Aside from dedicated theater rooms, I think you are better off just going higher end 5.1 setup or putting the money into a second sub and go 5.2 (can more easily get optimum sub tuning and immersive, earth shattering lows) ---- the side surround are typically hard to place correctly in normal living room situations without them looking completely ridiculous.
 
In my personal experience you need a really big room to make 7.1 back speakers worth it. Adding front height speakers added WAY more immersion for my setup. Granted you'll need a receiver that supports it. To me this is a much more enjoyable 7.1 setup then adding back surround speakers.
 
I know this has been said, but I'll say it again. Look at the recommended position of speakers for 7.1 and 5.1. Which one best matches your room's capability. While 7.1 is "better", it is only better if you can take advantage of the spacial capability it provides. If you look at it 5.1 surrounds sit between the 7.1 surrounds. So when you have 7.1 audio...they just down mix appropriately. Cheers!

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/consumer...ource=techmamas&utm_content=blog-rs-techmamas
 
It adds something, but I don't know if it's really worth it. It's nice, but it's nothing really great.

Personally, I'm taking my rear 7.1 channels and moving them to height channels to test it out.

It's nothing spectacular (in my room anyway), but it's not bad.
 
Ur_Mom said:
It adds something, but I don't know if it's really worth it. It's nice, but it's nothing really great.

Personally, I'm taking my rear 7.1 channels and moving them to height channels to test it out.

It's nothing spectacular (in my room anyway), but it's not bad.
Click to expand...

Is this in reference to the height channels? Some people have found that adding width channels creates a better experience for them. Something to keep in mind. I'd like to do both at some point :cool:
 
I use my two additional 7.1 channels as wide channels in audyssey and that experience has been outstanding.

going from 5.1 to 7.1 if you have an audyssey capable receivers is worth it, if not, probably not.
 
wadec22 said:
I use my two additional 7.1 channels as wide channels in audyssey and that experience has been outstanding.

going from 5.1 to 7.1 if you have an audyssey capable receivers is worth it, if not, probably not.
Click to expand...

I'd eventually like to move to 9.1 by adding both height and width channels. I imagine this being incredibly immersive. Adding more speakers to the front has indeed been outstanding. Sadly I lack the space at the moment.
 
didactandnarpet said:
Is this in reference to the height channels? Some people have found that adding width channels creates a better experience for them. Something to keep in mind. I'd like to do both at some point :cool:
Click to expand...

No, that was in reference to the rear speakers. It does make a difference in the movies that use them. But, I am using speakers from a previous install, so nothing was spent on them. I don't know if I'd pay a couple hundred dollars for the experience.
 
I tried out a friends 7.1 for a few weeks while they were moving in my current living room and while the sound increase the immersion somewhat, it was not worth the side speakers sitting out. I went back to my 5.1 system. I'm moving in 2 weeks and will have a much larger TV space and will be needing to purchase a new surround system. I've also been debating buying a new 7.1 vs a higher quality 5.1. From everything that I've read here and elsewhere, I think that I'm going to go with the slightly more expensive 5.1 system (maybe 5.2).
 
I've had the 7.1 system in place for a couple weeks. It's nice for games, but it pretty much silences your side channel speakers 90% of the time. Funny enough, the Xbox One breaks my TV's 5.1 signal into 7.1 (the back and side speakers mirror each other), which is nice.
I don't regret it, but I wouldn't say it has been awesome either.
 
You do realize that you can enable virtual surround sound right (7.1) to mitigate that issue. Mind you have only had my 7.1 setup for two days but i absolutely love the level of extra immersion that you get. But if i had got my extra pair of speakers for $130 shipped i most probably would not have upgraded.
 
I do okay with programs that do a good job of virtual surround (Foobar being a great one), but the settings on my receiver all sound "hollow." It's almost like they take a digital 5.1 signal and revert it back to some sort of pro logic type surround. The spacial effects just don't match up right.
In general, I'd rather just have the other channels used sparingly. The Xbox One does a fine job with TV, though.
 
I have a Sony STR-DN840 and a 7.1 energy speaker system and it sound glorious to be honest.
 
Looking at the reviews on cnet for your receiver it would seem that one the complaints about it was the sound quality so i guess what you said makes total sense now.
 
What settings are you using? I can definitely tinker with some of those sound fields. There are about 30 and the 9-10 I tried sounded too echo-heavy and displaced.

How do you like that 840? I was thinking of grabbing one of those on sale and selling my 1010 anyway. Seems the 2014 model 850 isn't much of an upgrade, so those will hopefully be coming down in price.
 
Dude i am extremely impressed with the DN840 the sound on it is really good and the amount of features that are there for you to play with are also very impressive. I have only had it for two days so i am still exploring all the options and features myself. Grab one if you can you will not regret it. With that said i know that quality of your speakers will also account for a huge margin of what type of sound you will end up with. I manually calibrated the speakers for the receiver. The specific sound field that i am using is the multi-stereo . I tried all the other options and while i did like some of the dolby options the multi-Stereo sound field sounds the best to me anyway. Mind you my speakers are just two days old so i am sure the sound will get even better once they are fully broken in. I am toying with the idea of getting another sub and moving to 7.2 setup.
 
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