I just bought a Onkyo 607 that has a place to hook up upper front surround sound speakers. I was just wanting to know if anyone has a receiver that does that and if they are using front surround sound speakers and if so is it worth the extra money to buy another set of speakers? I was thinking about getting a couple of 4B's satellite speakers, or some in wall/ceiling mount speakers.

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Aperion 5T's, 5C, 10D, 4B satellite's
Onkyo TX-SR607
Panasonic Plasma 58"
Playstation 3 Blu-Ray
Direct TV HD DVR

David:

I just bought a Onkyo 607 that has a place to hook up upper front surround sound speakers. I was just wanting to know if anyone has a receiver that does that and if they are using front surround sound speakers and if so is it worth the extra money to buy another set of speakers? I was thinking about getting a couple of 4B's satellite speakers, or some in wall/ceiling mount speakers.

David,

I am not aware of any of our customers using the "front height" outputs on the 607 yet.  I do know that Cnet reviewed the 607, with some Aperion 4B's no less, and couldn't really hear an audible difference (http://reviews.cnet.com/av-receivers/onkyo-tx-sr607-black/4505-6466_7-33553470.html?tag=mncol;lst).  However, they do point out that the 607 still sounds fantastic with the Aperions.

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Mark
Aperion Audio Guru

I haven't heard Dolby IIz for myself, but here is a review of the front height channel that contradicts CNET's:

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/features/3152/tech-trends-09-taking-you-higher.html

On page 2, the reviewer compares switching back and forth from the front height channels to the rear surrounds.  He describes the rear surrounds as sounding "hokey" compared to the front height.  The Sound & Vision review, as well as the CNET review, is 100 percent "professional" and "unbiased", so who are you gonna believe?

Yeah, I haven't heard IIz yet either.  We've only recently received the 607's and haven't had one long enough to try out yet.

I note the Sound and Vision demo was done setup by Dolby using a laptop running the decoding software.  Not quite an apples to apples comparison.  Perhaps there were some tweaks made with the Dolby setup that were lacking in the Onkyo setup that Cnet did since I imagine having direct control of the software via a computer allows a lot more customization than what the Onkyo's setup would allow.

Just shows that it is early in the "front height" game.  DTS hasn't even released their version yet.

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Mark
Aperion Audio Guru