...there is a large range of potential options in form, complexity and cost between getting some form of surround sound and providing a cinema type experience.
Brad,
Agreed. The whole point of surround sound is to provide an immersive experience that allows the viewer to feel like they are in the environment being viewed on the screen (of course, special/spatial effects are fun, too, and definitely add to the experience if used correctly - and sparingly).
I think that the OP's biggest struggle will be determining exactly how to provide the horizontal Left-to-Right coverage needed to be to achieve accurate localization for the viewing area. There's a reason that movie theatres are almost always long and narrow, not wide and shallow. I should think that there would have to be a few delay zones to keep things lined up with the on-screen image.
Also, as I see it, the surround speakers should be considered complementary, not standalone...a fact lost on many people, I fear. I guess it might be important for them to be capable of standing by themselves (hard-panned speech/shouting/effects), but not usually necessary. It's not my area of expertise, but I'd sure like to know!
I don't know the typical SPL requirements for cinema sound systems (but judging from the annoyingly loud levels most movies are shown at nowadays, they must compete with typical SR systems); the dynamic range needs to be quite large, I'm sure, and the noise floor probably has to be quite low since it's a more focused listening environment. That being said, most of the modern movies I've seen seem more compressed than those in the past - I miss having to actually
listen to hear the quiet parts (or maybe the system processor just wasn't setup properly...I don't know).
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this project.
