Currently SBL's Front and Centre IBL's as rear.

Is it worth adding a rear pair? Because of the room (There's a spiral staircase at the rear in the middle so 6.1 is out) would it make much difference.

I know there is little 6.1 or 7.1 stuff out there but would 7.1 be worth it - if so use cheap amp and speakers or worth Naiming it. Or just buy more music/DVDs etc.

Room 28' x 18'

Rears about 18' back from fronts.

Stuart,

6.1 is most common now with a decent and recent av amp. DD and DTS can do 6.1 and 7.1 is just adding extra speakers without extraa decoding (on most amps). I use 6.1 and find this really good and didn't find 7.1 any better.

Also with 7.1 it usually uses 2 rear centre speakers. My Yamaha amp (£250) can do up to 9.1 utilising "presence" speakers at rear and front. But this is still processed as no more than 6.1 . Obviously the newer HD processing amps can do more, but you never mentioned having this.

I have connected my av amp to my 202/200 using the Naim stuff in stereo mode for music (obviously) and for powering the fronts on av, with the Yamaha doing the rear and centre duties. This setup works really well for me.

Hope this helps.

Ryan

Not sure if it's worth it, I just wanted to post in this forum so I could see my name on all forums at once for the first time.

Also note:-

-PLII matrix's as 5.1
-PLIIx/Neo:6 will recreate as 6.1/7.1

(utilising bass mix of course)

-5.1 EX/DTS ES Matrix effectivly matrixes the surrounds on to the rear channel(s), so its not a true discrete channel like DTS ES Discrete's extra channel