Favourite way to decode 2.0 music into 5.1?

I’m enjoying the DVD of Dire Straits’ On The Night (1992), which I picked up from a charity shop yesterday for a measly quid. The soundtrack is just in 2.0, quite possibly from the same master as the CD release, with no particular codec mentioned on the sleeve. I’ve therefore been experimenting with the various ways my Denon AV amp can fudge it into 5.1 but I haven’t found a consistent one that I like.

Dolby PLII sounds OK but perhaps a bit echo-y, DTS Neo:6 Music is a bit meh and Neural-THX is the one I’ve settled on, though I liked it less at first. Having said that, some of the solo instruments are now coming rather more from the surrounds than the fronts, which is discombobulating when the player is right in front of you on the screen. I can also do ‘multi-surround’ which just routes the 2.0 to each speaker more or less equally - that just sounds muddled - and straightforward L&R 2.0, but that’s a bit boring.

So, do you have any codec preferences for how you listen to a 2.0 music track in 5.1? Or does it depend very much on the disc?

Mark

If the disc isn’t surround encoded with any Dolby Pro Logic version, don’t force it. Stick with 2.0 stereo would be my advice. Any attempt otherwise is just forcing a round peg into a square hole.

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