It all depends on the size of your room and your seating position. If your room is large enough to benefit from 7.1 and you can place surrounds speakers BEHIND you as well as on the sides, then it would be worth it.
There are increasingly more Blu-ray discs coming out with 7.1 soundtracks and there is no harm in future-proofing.
If you have a good processor, even 5.1 soundtracks would some more immersive with a 7.1 set-up. But if this going to break your bank or you expect to listen to 7.1 soundtracks almost exclusively anytime soon, then 7.1 is probably not right for you.
One thing is that if you starting from scratch and building the system into your room, might as well add cabling for those "height" channels that will be above the left and right fronts for the under-development 9.1 Dolby and DTS formats!
In five years, 5.1 will be history and the topic of this thread will be "7.1 vs. 9.1".
There are increasingly more Blu-ray discs coming out with 7.1 soundtracks and there is no harm in future-proofing.
If you have a good processor, even 5.1 soundtracks would some more immersive with a 7.1 set-up. But if this going to break your bank or you expect to listen to 7.1 soundtracks almost exclusively anytime soon, then 7.1 is probably not right for you.
One thing is that if you starting from scratch and building the system into your room, might as well add cabling for those "height" channels that will be above the left and right fronts for the under-development 9.1 Dolby and DTS formats!
In five years, 5.1 will be history and the topic of this thread will be "7.1 vs. 9.1".