Nick Danger

I have a basic 5.1 setup. The left rear channel died and makes no sound. I know that it's the channel from the receiver, because if I plug in a different speaker that speaker goes silent.

It occurs to me that I have unused channels for a 7.1 setup. If I plug my rear speakers into the "surround back or height" channels, will I get the audio information I want, or will it just be vague atmospheric sound? In short, will it be a good substitute?

The receiver is an Onkyo TX-NR575. I opened up the case to look for a loose connection, but the speaker outputs are kind of deep inside. I don't want to remove two or three circuit boards just to have a look-see.

andicus

Does your receiver have any auto detection for speakers?

If so, I would plug both surround speakers into the surround back jacks, and set your receiver to 5.1. Then let it auto-detect and see if the receiver automatically uses the surround back outputs.

Might not work, but it's worth a shot. I'm not aware of receivers that let you manually assign speakers.

If they don't work, then I'd do what you've suggested, and just switch to 7.1 with the hope of getting 'something' useful out of them.

Nick Danger

I tried it, and the BluRay disk I used as a tester didn't have any output from those channels.

Maybe I need to go into the settings and turn on those speakers. I'll have to poke around some more.

John Galt

Yeah, go into the setup menu and see if you can reassign the surround speaker or Zone 2 inputs to the rear channels. Looking through the manual, I don't think they have that capability....but it's not exactly clear.