With time REALLY dragging while awaiting my V60s I finally got around to trying a long delayed project. That was seeing how a Haffler ambiance extracation circut would sound in my system. These date back many years and are nothing new. In fact you can probably construct one quite easily yourself but I decided to try something off the shelf. Some time ago Dynaco put out a "Quark QD-1 Series II 5 Channel Home Theater System" I would say it was misnamed at best for it is a little unit that purports to extract a center and two rear surround channels from a stereo signal, in theory providing a quick and dirty 5.0 setup. The center channel can be turned off leaving the two rears which are actually ambiance extraction signals. You see the units on e-bay frequently for less than $100. Anyway I had picked up one some months ago and set it up today using two 626 speakers placed behind my seating position. The result was really pretty amazing -- somewhere in between more than noticable to almost startling. Switching the rears on and off is like moving from the mezzanine to the orchestra at a concert. The usual caveat: you may get different results. Heck, you may not even like it, but I sure did. But let me give fair warning -- don't try it unless you are prepared to expend the resources for two extra amplification channels, cables, and speakers for once you try it you may never be able to go back!
Paul