This thread sure took a left turn.....
I have to speak out a bit on this and hope I don't step on any toes.
Seaton's room at Newport Beach was a true 5.1 HT setup when 95+% of the show was 2 channel. No, it was not a great dedicated 2 channel setup - he never demoed in 2 channel to my knowledge. He used a (I believe) middle of the line Onkyo receiver with the pre outs feeding a very high power pro-line amplifier. The speakers were shoved up against the walls in order to maximize listening area and he used Audessey to minimize room issues.
The Demo pieces he used were almost entirely Hi-rez 5.1 sources.
It was not a shock that in that room, with the speakers where they were, and the source material used, that it was a fairly 2 Dimensional soundstage. I was actually surprised that the demo track from the Sheffield Drum Demo disc had pretty good imaging (in 2 dimensions).
This was a demo geared towards Home Theater, and in that regard (where SPL and a sense of unlimited headroom are high on the list of must haves), the Seaton room was very impressive.
If I had the bucks for a dedicated HT room...........
.... these would be on my short list for "Must" consideration.
