Home theater or stereo?

[David Harper]

I'm interested to know do most here, when listening to music (not movies) listen to a surround sound system or two channel stereo? Can a home theater surround system be easily switched to just front left/front right two channel?

 

[ThatM1key]

I'm interested to know do most here, when listening to music (not movies) listen to a surround sound system or two channel stereo? Can a home theater surround system be easily switched to just front left/front right two channel?

It depends on your receiver, I would say. My father's Onkyo has a relay when he switches from 5.1 to 2.0 while my Sony doesn't have any click. He hates switching between DSPs while I don't mind because you know, mine doesn't click.

Personally If I'm listening to Spotify, I use the "Movie" DSP called "Dolby Surround" which still sounds good with music. Puts the voice in the center while the rest of the music in the other speakers, surrounds you very well. For serious listening, I flick on pure direct and listen to 2 channel. Sometimes with Spotify & lossy music I use the "Music Enhancer" DSP which is a simple name for DSEE HX (Basically it upscales music). You can basically do whatever you want if you have the right AVR.

 

[JeffS7444]

Can a home theater surround system be easily switched to just front left/front right two channel?

In the case of my Marantz (and Denon would be the same), there's no switching involved: Multichannel soundtracks will play as multichannel, while 2-channel will utilize just subwoofer and L+R speakers unless I switch to Dolby Surround, which as noted above, can do a pretty good job of simulating surround audio.

When shopping for an AVR or AV processor, do take some time to learn about the room-correction software used, as some are better than others in allowing you to create a frequency response which is equally appropriate for music as well as movies. As of late 2021, popular choices for enthusiasts include Audyssey's XT32, as well as Dirac and Trinnov products.

Speaker-wise, when playing movies, the Center channel does much of the heavy lifting, while L+R do surprisingly little. Whereas with 2-channel mixes, L+R do most of the work.