and this would degrade the overall surround space portrayal by PLIIX, which feeds distinctly different signals to the back surrounds as to the side/rear surrounds, in order to better re-create believable acoustics of the recorded alternative large space all around you. Conversely, the best loudspeaker arrangement for PLIIX would degrade the presentation by unprocessable high resolution surround audio discs. In short, the loudspeaker locations that seem best for one kind of surround material would sonically compromise another kind of surround material. Is there any way out of this quandary?
      We developed one tactic which seems to work very well (you might think of others that work even better). What do we do? Essentially, we trick the AVR300. You see, the AVR300 thoughtfully and generously provides 8 channels of analog direct input, not just the usual 6 (5 plus subwoofer). It suddenly occurred to us that we could get out of the quandary above by exploiting this virtue of the AVR300, and tricking it.
      The basic concept is to employ the AVR300 to automatically switch the back surround loudspeakers between two distinct functions, functioning as back surrounds for program material where their location is sonically optimum, but functioning as side/rear surrounds for other program material where their location is sonically (nearly) optimum for that distinct role. By employing our tactic, tricking the AVR300, you too can get the AVR300 to automatically switch the roles of the back surround loudspeakers between these two functions, for the different kinds of program material, so you get a nearly optimum loudspeaker setup for both kinds of program material.
      In order to optimally employ our trick tactic, your back surround loudspeakers should be positioned so they are about 30 degrees off the back central axis (adjust to taste on various kinds of program material). This suggested 30 degree starting point is just slightly on the wide side for these loudspeakers when they are operating as back surrounds, and slightly on the narrow side for these loudspeakers when they are operating as side/rear surrounds, so there is a bit of compromise here (which you should feel free to play with and adjust).
Fortunately, human hearing is less directionally acute and more forgiving for sounds coming from our back side, so the slight angular compromises here should not be too detrimental sonically. Also, those multichannel high resolution audio discs which contain only hall ambience in their rear channels won't be degraded much if this ambience is reproduced by rear loudspeakers closer together than usual (quite to the contrary, their surround sound field will actually be helped, since at least some hall ambience should come [and sounds most convincing when it comes] from a listener's direct back rather than from 45 degrees off to the side of rear). Meanwhile, those mutilchannel high resolution audio discs which actually contain closely miked multi-mono information, which places performers directly at (and confined inside) each loudspeaker location, won't be harmed much if the trumpet player standing 45 degrees to one rear side is slightly relocated to be say 30 degrees to that rear side instead.
      Recall that, because PLIIX feeds a high quality and full range signal to the back surround channels, we recommended that your back surround loudspeakers be high quality and full range (or nearly full range, with coverage above 40 Hz). So these same loudspeakers will also be very well suited to their new alternative function as high quality, full range side/rear surround loudspeakers for multichannel high resolution audio material. Likewise, because PLIIX feeds two distinct and different stereo signals to the back surround channels, the two back surround loudspeakers have to be spaced well apart for their back surround function with PLIX, so they are already well located for their new alternative function as side/rear surround loudspeakers for multichannel high resolution audio material.
      What is exactly is our trick tactic? Simple. From among the multichannel analog outputs of your disc player, take the two interconnect cables coming from the side/rear surround outputs (usually just labeled rear surround), and then plug these cables into the multichannel analog inputs of the AVR300. But don't plug them into the LS and RS (left surround and right surround) input jacks. Instead, plug them into the LSB and RSB (left surround back and right surround back) input jacks. Presto! You're done!
      But then, how does the AVR300 automatically switch the back surround loudspeakers into functioning as side/rear surrounds, for the right kind of program material, i.e. whenever you select the multichannel analog direct input (called DVD-A)? How does the AVR300 know what you want it to do? And how does it accomplish the switching? It doesn't. It doesn't know, and it doesn't switch. You are the clever one, tricking the AVR300, and getting the switching accomplished, without the AVR300 even realizing that's it's doing you such a convenient favor.
      You see, all 8 multichannel analog direct inputs go directly straight through the AVR300 in analog form. The AVR300 doesn't know which channel is which (indeed, even the power to virtually all the intelligence of its digital brain is turned off in this analog direct mode). Since the AVR300 in analog direct mode doesn't know one of these 8 input channels from the other, you can easily fool it, and scramble or misuse the channels as labeled. In other words, you can use any and every one of the 8 channels for your own nefarious ends, without the AVR300 being any the wiser. So, by simply putting the side/rear multichannel analog signal from your disc player into the back surround input instead of the side/rear surround input of the AVR300, you can route this signal in analog direct mode through the AVR300 processor section, thence to the back surround channels of the AVR300 power amplifier section, and thence to your back surround loudspeakers, which will now function as side/rear surrounds for this program material - all without the AVR300 being any the wiser. Note that the actual side/rear surround loudspeakers will fall silent in this mode, since you have an array with 7 loudspeaker positions but only 5 channels of information to feed this array.
      On the other hand, when you select any mode that invokes processing, i.e. any mode other than analog direct, the AVR300 suddenly wakes up, and it does know what all the other inputs are, and how to assign them and where to route them. In particular, with digitally input signals, such as from DVD video material and two channel music CDs, the AVR300 correctly assigns each portion of the digital input stream to the correct power amplifier channel and the correct loudspeaker output jacks, sending the side/rear surround signal to your actual side/rear surround loudspeakers, and generating a matrix derived signal that it sends to your back surround loudspeakers, which therefore makes them now assume a back surround function instead of the side/rear surround function they had under the analog direct mode.
      Thanks to this trick tactic, you can get the best of both worlds from one loudspeaker array, without having to shuffle loudspeakers around. From your AVR300, you can get the best surround sound field from the spectacular new Dolby Digital PLIIX playing all your video soundtracks, and the best surround sound field from two channel CDs via Neo 6 (or PLIIX) enhancement, while still getting the best surround sound field from multichannel surround high resolution audio discs.
      Which brings us to the next question. Where should you locate your side/rear surround loudspeakers? Since they are not needed at all for playback of multichannel high resolution audio discs via analog direct mode, they are freed from that 45 degree side rear position to which they were formerly tied, and you are now free to place them optimally for best surround sound field effect with the AVR300's signal processing, surround enhancement modes. In other words, our trick tactic above once again means that we don't need to compromise the magical surround field that's optimally possible from the AVR300's processing modes, just in order to also accommodate playback of multichannel surround discs via the analog direct mode they mandate.
      We experimented with various locations for these side/rear surround loudspeakers, using the AVR300's spectacular Digital PLIIX mode for processing video soundtracks, and our preferred Neo 6 mode for stunningly enhancing two channel music CDs. The location that worked out best for us was to locate the two side/rear surround loudspeakers directly to the sides of our ear canals, aimed so they pointed directly into our ear canals. This optimized our psychoacoustic perception of the hall or large venue acoustics on both sides.
      This direct side location is one of the best for optimizing the Damaske effect, a phenomenon wherein the human ear/brain can optimally hear into the hall ambience of a recording if information is fed to it from a direction that is difficult to localize. When the side/rear surround loudspeaker is directly to your side, you can hear only that it is to one side, and your ear/brain cannot assign any front vs. back nor up vs. down localization to it. Then, when you have two matched such sources, one on either side, radiating hall ambience at you, your ear/brain even tends to lose track of the left vs. right localization of these sources within your small listening room.
      The result is that you can hear better into, and you pay more attention to, the localization and ambience information from the recording, about the large alternative hall or venue. In consequence, you are more effectively and believably transported out of your small listening room and immersed into the large alternative venue of the recording. We achieved our most stunning spatial results from the AVR300 with the side/rear surrounds directly at our sides. You can also experiment with locating them to your sides but slightly forward of, or slightly rearward of, your listening chair.

Delay and Level Settings

      Since the AVR300 does not have memory presets for storing different delay and level settings for the various processing modes and various types of program material, we worked to find a compromise setting that would serve all modes and all program material well. As noted above, the Neo 6 Music enhancement mode, which works so superbly at providing believable surround enhancement for your huge library of music on two channel CD (or vinyl), requires higher volume levels for all four surround channels, and ideally also longer delay settings. We also found that the direct side location, which proved optimum for positioning the side/rear surround loudspeakers, demanded a longer than expected delay time, in order to prevent the ear/brain from localizing the loudspeaker itself, directly to our side and within our listening room. Thus, in order to optimize the surround sound field from Neo 6, we found ourselves setting all four surround volume levels on the high side, and also setting their delays to much higher than the usual instruction you see, which says that all delays should be equal (including path length differences) from all loudspeakers.
      Incidentally, setting the delay for all surrounds higher than expected also provides the benefit of allowing you to set the volume level of all surrounds higher than expected, thereby enriching perceived hall surround ambience, without incurring the problem of your ear/brain localizing the main sound as coming from the louder playing sides or back, instead of from the stage up front. That's because, thanks to the Haas effect, our ear/brains pay more attention to the sound that arrives first (the sound from the front stage, since we have raised the delay to all surrounds), even if that sound is less loud than a later sound. The Haas effect  thereby allows us to raise the volume level to all ambience-enriching surrounds, perhaps to be even louder than the front loudspeakers, without pulling the main performance from the stage up front, because we have also significantly delayed the signal coming from all these louder surrounds.
      The high settings of surround volume level and delay which are optimum for Neo 6 are admittedly on the high side for most Dolby modes, including Dolby Digital PLIIX, since Dolby matrices feed more volume level and richer ambience to the surrounds than Neo 6 does. But we found that in practice these high settings still gave stunning surround sound field results with all the Dolby modes, including the spectacular results we reported above with the new Dolby Digital PLIIX. Furthermore, video soundtracks (movies and concert videos) nearly always benefit from a little extra quantity of rich surround ambience, so our higher surround settings based on Neo 6 optimization serve well to further your enjoyment of soundtracks heard via Dolby Digital PLIIX.
      Using Neo 6 Music as our baseline, we wound up setting the extra delay to all surrounds to about 30 milliseconds, and then boosting their volume level until we could just barely localize the sound as coming from the side or back, then backing down just one notch. This setting gave the optimum three dimensional pop and palpable solid reality to the imaging of the performers up front on stage, while also providing a rich and very believable hall surround and immersion experience. This is the AVR300 setting that enabled us to get that amazing result, of better three dimensional stage imaging and better surround hall sound from a 50 year old two channel recording, than is furnished by many of today's multichannel surround sound high resolution audio discs that similarly place hall ambience at your rear.
      If you have a keen ear, you can fine tune these level and delay settings for the four surrounds, until you get optimum three dimensional pop of performers' images on stage, and optimum believability of the hall ambience around you. The level and delay settings interact in their effects, so be patient as you experiment with both types of controls, for the two sets of surround loudspeakers (obviously, you should set the left and right members of each surround pair identically). The AVR300 is so superbly revealing that it makes this optimization process easier than you might think, since even small changes in ambience or three dimensionality are immediately and clearly revealed by the AVR300. And this same transparency of the AVR300 makes it doubly rewarding when you have finally dialed in the optimum settings, since you will then hear a sonic treat you have never heard before, and with these same settings the AVR300 will continue to reward you, on one recording and soundtrack after another, with surround sound experiences that you have never experienced before.
      The volume level adjustment can be accessed via the AVR300's setup menu, or more quickly via the trim button on the remote.  But the delay adjustment can only be accessed via the setup menu. Since these two adjustments interact for optimizing the surround sound field, you'll often want to quickly switch from adjusting one to adjusting the other, so we'd recommend just going into the setup menu and staying there, to access both level and delay adjustments.
      The AVR300 thoughtfully offers you your choice of fine or coarse delay adjustments. Even the most expensive competing high end surround processors provide delay adjustments no finer than 1 foot (or its equivalent, 1 millisecond). But the AVR300 cares for the discriminating listener, by providing delay adjustment increments as fine as 4 inches, which is three times better resolution. A sensitive ear can hear delay offset differences down to a fraction of one inch, so the discriminating listener might want to physically move his loudspeakers, in order to dial in the last few inches or fractions of an inch, in order to achieve delay alignment and optimization among all the loudspeakers, after he has set his processor to its best setting nearest to the actual optimum. But various constraints (e.g. a nearby wall) often make it inadvisable to move a loudspeaker by the 6 inch amount forced upon you by other processors, with their 1 foot delay adjustment resolution. The AVR300, with its option for choosing 4 inch resolution, means that you only have to move your loudspeaker by 2 inches at most, in order to achieve perfect delay settings.
      In its fine setting, the AVR300 can achieve up to 24.4 milliseconds (24.4 feet worth) of delay. And in its coarse setting, with the usual 1 foot (1 millisecond) delay resolution, the AVR300 can achieve up to 40 milliseconds (40 feet worth) of delay. To choose the fine delay increment mode, simply select meters of distance as your chosen unit of measurement for delay, and you will automatically get fine increments of 0.1 meter, which is equivalent to 4 inches or 0.3 milliseconds (granted, in this mode, native English unit users will have to mentally convert meters to feet or milliseconds). To instead choose the standard coarser delay increment mode of 1 foot or 1 millisecond, simply select feet distance or milliseconds of time as your chosen unit for delay.
      Incidentally, remember that, as with all other processors and DVD players, when you select milliseconds of time as your measurement unit the delay to a particular loudspeaker gets greater with a higher numerical setting, but when you select distance as your delay measurement unit, then the delay to a particular loudspeaker gets greater when you make the numerical setting smaller. Thus, if you elect to use distance as your chosen measurement unit, you should probably set the two front main loudspeakers to the maximum delay number (for minimum delay time), say 40 feet in the case of the AVR300 set to feet, and then remember that the delay to any surround loudspeaker will be that maximum (say 40) minus the setting you see on screen (which is why you need to go to progressively lower numbers in order to get the progressively larger delays we recommend for the surrounds). If this confuses your intuitions, simply stick to time (milliseconds) as your chosen unit of delay measurement.
      Note that the delays and levels you have set up for all the AVR300's surround processing and enhancement modes will be moot in the analog direct mode, since of course the AVR300 does not do any signal processing whatsoever in this mode. In order to optimize the surround sound field for this analog direct mode, you should use the delay and level adjustments available in your disc player. In most players, these adjustments affect only the analog outputs (including the multichannel analog outputs you'll be using for feeding the AVR300 in analog direct mode), and do not affect the digital output port of the disc player, meaning that your careful settings on the AVR300 won't be disturbed or corrupted by additional level or delay manipulations due to the disc player settings.
      Incidentally, the AVR300's built-in tuner is serviceable (as is the case with the tuners built into most other receivers), and has some useful special features. But its basic sonic quality is not up the high end standards set by the rest of the AVR300. Specifically, the tuner section's tonal balance is too lean (warmth is not rich enough), and the midrange and treble frequencies have too much solid state hardness. So, if you a serious broadcast listener, we would suggest getting a separate dedicated tuner. On the plus side, the AVR300 is superb at enriching all stereo broadcasts with its surround enhancement modes, just as it does for two channel music on CD (as discussed above), and indeed all two channel sources. Once again, our favorite AVR300 surround enhancement mode for stereo material is Neo 6 Music mode (with the levels and delays set high on all four surrounds), and this yields a wonderful experience from FM stereo broadcasts, whether from the built-in tuner or from an external tuner.

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