Thank you for these explanations if I want to do that, I need two AVR prologics for two wides? or a single prologic AVR?
Thank you for these explanations if I want to do that, I need two AVR prologics for two wides? or a single prologic AVR?Yes, I take the pre-outs from the AVR (after Atmos processing) and take say Left Main and Left Side Surround and plug them into the Left/Right inputs of a PLII AVR. Pick a decoder mode (Neo6 and Neural Surround also work in addition to Pro Logic and Pro Logic II) and that input is removed from the inputs while the resulting center output gives you a mostly discrete output between the two input speakers.
Repeat this for the right side and you have Front Wides that always work for any decoded surround mode including Auro-3D which doesn't normally support Front Wides. It even works with Logic 7 output on my Lexicon MC-1 plugged into my 7.1 inputs on my Marantz 7012.
You can go one further. For my overhead speakers I invert the phase of one of the inputs between Front Heights and Rear Heights. This makes the correlated output come out of the surround outputs instead. There are two of them spaced apart about 30 degrees. I just flip the polarity back to normal on that "side" by swapping the +/- leads on those speaker outputs.
Thus, I get two "Tops" extracted from each side giving me Heights+Tops (8 ceiling speakers) from two PLII AVRs. Atmos demos show the sounds are where they're supposed to be.
You can only normally get Heights+Tops from a Storm or Trinnov processor. Better yet, you can get around other home Atmos limitations. For example, the cinema version of Ready Player One uses "Bed Heights" which were meant to play through all ceiling speakers but the Atmos home encoder only put them in Top Middle (phantom imaged with Heights or Tops), but if you have 6 overheads you only get Top Middle and with 8 or 10 overheads (Storm/Trinnov) you only get either Tops or Top Middle respectively.
On my system, all I have to do is select multichannel stereo mode on the two overhead PLII AVRs and I get the cinema style full arrayed Heights+Tops signal in that movie so direct overhead sounds follow you around across all three rows of seating just like it did at the cinema.