I still have and use a JVC XL Z 1010 surround unit. This, I am sure, will horrify most dyed in the wool audiophiles but so what. The sound is much more alive when the effects speakers are running. The question of the quality of the effect speakers is bogus since the level at which they have to play to recreate ambience is so low that any decent speaker driven by a low power, clean amp will do the trick. Trying to get "soundstaging" and a broad, wide and deep image with two speakers is mission impossible. Audiophiles love to hear the illusion of music appearing not to come from the speakers themselves, so they set them up as far as they can from the front and side walls getting what I have always heard (my latest auditioning of a state of the art system consisting of Pass electronics and Dynaudio speakers having yet confirmed this) as an "outside looking in" sort of presentation. The use of dipoles, be they electrostats or dynamic panels or conventional dynamic driver speakers, confirms that openess is due to the later arrival of the wave coming from the back of the speaker. Don't get me wrong, I am not stating that electrostats get their sound solely from usually being dipoles, but I digress. With ambiance synthesis, you walk into a room where the system is playing and, unless you get a cue from looking at the additional speakers, what you hear gives you the distinct impression that you are inside the acoustic space. No it's not all perfect, since recordings normally have some ambiance built in, the whole thing can be overdone by layering on too much ambiance. Likewise, some of the settings are just way too obvious (who actulally needs stadium or cathedral, except, in the latter case, maybe for pipe organ or sacred music). I do not know where new formats will go in terms of additional ambiance channels, but one thing is certain: the purists will cringe and will bring out the purity and naturalness arguments and will trot out every well worn cliché to convince one and all that what is really needed in an amplifier with more "air", or some magic cable or better yet an a.c. cord that transcends the laws of physics... I am sure that if you took the guts out of a JVC unit, installed them in a chassis weighing at least 50 pounds, put in six regulated power supplies, cones instead of feet and a facaplate at least 3/4 of an inch thick, build it in America or Europe, associated it with the name of some ex-NASA scientist or Bell lab genius,and asked $20,000.00 for it, a goodly number of audiophiles would go for it. I am sure you could find a used JVC for little money to at least experiment. Simply hide the whole thing if any true blue audiophile friends show up. It avoids arguments to the effect that you are not hearing pure music, the occasional sneer and allows you to save face. Remember, the whole thing with reproduced music is that it is an illusion to start with. Sometimes it simply is a better illusion, you decide.
