Most home theatre audio boxes nowadays have different modes, including
A/B speaker outputs.
I don't think mine will do mono but I can select stereo with sub or
5.1. Depending on how things are mixed sometimes stereo sounds
better.
There are also different modes that modify the matix decoding like
"Game" or "Concert Hall".
The Dolby ProLogic can sound very good, if the tracks were recorded
properly. If you try to decode something that wasn't encoded, though,
you might sometimes get garbage. Some of the old stuff sounds better
in mono. Technically if you send mono to both L and R inputs you
should get mono from L, C, and R outs, but sometimes you don't.
I have three Klipsch up front, a custom made sub, and el-cheapo KLH
surrounds. No one seems to make a decent small surround speaker that
sounds any better than the cheap KLHs for a reasonable price. I think
the KLHs were born to be bookshelf speakers. I tried several higher
end name brand speakers as surrounds but none sounded any better, many
were on par quality wise with the KLHs. I think KLH may have
accidentally made a speaker with good range for surround use.
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