Bearcat M. Sandor wrote: ... Right. 5.1 was designed for movies playing in cinemas. One of the problems with cinemas is that the owners stuff in as many paying customers as possible. This means that many people end up off to one side sitting close a surround speaker. Because of this, the centre channel has to be used to lock the dialogue to the screen. So, yes, the centre channel of 5.1 was designed for people who are sitting off axis (or way in the back of the cinema). But this is not the only way a centre speaker can be used. If you wish, you can derive three new signals for L, C, R from two stereo input signals, and use the centre speaker to improve localisation even for on-axis listeners. One such system is called "Trifield", see: M.A. Gerzon, "Optimum Reproduction Matrices for Multispeaker Stereo", J. Audio Engineering Society, vol. 40 no. 7/8, pp. 571-589 (1992 July/Aug.) If you wish, you can record for three front speakers. See: M.A. Gerzon, "Microphone Techniques for 3-Channel Stereo", Preprint 3450 of the 93rd Audio Engineering Society Convention, San Francisco (1992 Oct. 1-4) A centre speaker is not *needed*, but it can be useful even for domestic on-axis listening. Regards, Martin -- Martin J Leese E-mail: martin.leese stanfordalumni.org Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/