Anyone running 9 or 10 speakers in their HT setup?

That's what happened to me too, when I saw Dark Knight in IMAX. Before then, I could always equal or trump what I heard at a theater, IMAX included.

I notice you have Blu-ray and HD DVD players, but--cool as your pre/pro is--it doesn't decode the new lossless surround schemes--uncompressed PCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Theater.

I have reason to believe your problem is with the source material, not your hardware. It was quite obvious to me that the surround sound in IMAX Dark Knight was totally uncompressed.

If you're using the coax or toslink digital outputs from your Blu-ray and HD DVD players into your Sunfire, you're not getting the full resolution of the TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Theater soundtracks; you're getting a down-converted DTS datastream that doesn't tax the bandwidth limitations of a SP/DIF digital connection, albeit with an incremental sound improvement over the sound of std-def DVD owing to the faster data transfer in HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Before doing such a dramatic upgrade, see if you can borrow a Blu-ray machine with internal processing and plug the analog outputs into the Sunfire's multichannel analog inputs. Then select a Blu-ray or HD DVD disc with particularly good soundtrack, select the best resolution the disc has to offer (e.g., TrueHD), and see how your system sounds.

Compared to lossless surround, Dolby Digital 5.1 and even DTS sucks. The surround channels are noticeably compressed, limiting both their frequency response and dynamic range. It's not worth upgrading the downstream hardware until you can hear what your current system can do with a true uncompressed surround source.

And, although I haven't gone 9-channel, I'm running 7 omnidirectional or bipolar Mirage speakers in my system, with two subwoofers. I have a total of 26 drivers and 1625 high current RMS watts in an 18x20 room. The soundfield is completely seamless.

My experience playing the HD DVD of Polar Express was enlightening when it comes to the increased audio bandwidth of Dolby TrueHD. When I turned up the volume to +4 (I usually listen at -8), my home system was every bit the equal of the IMAX dynamics in the first scene where the steam train rolls up. My stepson came running out of his room to see if something had crashed into the house!

Your Sony Blu-ray player has 5.1ch analog outs, but it's not internally processing the TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Theater codecs. That's why you're unimpressed and it's why I suggested borrowing a Blu-ray player with internal lossless audio decoding. They're just starting to come out now, and the cheapest one is the new Panasonic DMP-50 at $700.

Of course the prices will come down. You may want to get another pair of Kappas and go 7-channel, but you won't achieve what you REALLY want until you get a higher bandwidth audio signal going to the amps. After all, the IMAX surround is 6-channel. It's 12,000 watts, but it has to fill a 450-seat theater.

On paper, my 1600w, 26-driver surround system should equal in an 18x20 room what 12K watts does in an IMAX theater. Most of the time it does, but the deck is stacked against us until we can get lossless surround sources.

I'm with you--the stuff's too expensive and feature-deficient to adopt right now. I'm not spending $700 to get the Panasonic and I'm sure as hell not tossing my Boston Acoustics AVP7 pre-pro out in favor of an Integra 9.8 pre/pro. I'll just wait until Oppo or somebody offers an all-in-one Blu-ray player with internal hi-def audio processing for $400 or less, and then I'll bite. Until then, I'll wait.

WIth all this talk about Y-adapters, let's remember that Mitch4t's Sunfire Pre/Pro has NINE channels of pre/outs (plus sub outs), not 5 or 7. That makes them all controllable and calibratable from his single pre/pro. The 8th and 9th outputs are a synthesis of any other two channels you assign it (such as to fill in the front sides between front L-R and surround L-R, or between surround L-R and rear surround L-R.

If you look at Mitch's system, you'll see he has a humongous amount of space to fill. Most of the rest of us try to achieve that seamless soundfield with an accessory called "walls." :)

08-11-08: Mitch4t
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The IMAX screen I saw was six stories high. You could tell when the IMAX shots were on the screen.....the on-screen image filled the entire screen. The 35 mm portions of the movie of course were letterbox style, still outstanding though.

Then you saw it in a real IMAX theater. And while the image quality in letterbox was good, I noticed quite a drop in resolution compared to fullscreen IMAX shots. And I could be wrong, but I think the letterbox portions were shot in 70mm.

Concerning your question about plugging the DMP-50's 5.1 outputs into the Sunfire, AFAIK the analog inputs are a bypassed analog pass-thru, so you also bypass any of the Sunfire's internal digital processing. So if you want to send that 5.1 signal to 7 or more speakers, you'll need to do it with Y-adapters.

And once again, I need to follow a poster's link to his System pics and equipment list before I start pontificating on how to fix it. Your viewing/listening area is huge and unbounded. In that case, you could use extra speakers or wall in your viewing/listening to get boundary reinforcement.

Still, I don't think we can equal the soundtrack performance of "Dark Knight" at home until we have an uncompressed audio surround source. As Steuspeed said, except for rocket launches, IMAX surround is essentially 5.1. But they have an uncompressed audio source and use both prodigious power and highly efficient horn-loaded speakers to achieve an exceptional dynamic range. And they have a subwoofer enclosure you can walk around in.