Dumb Question:

What is Stereo?

I know what stereo is its a 2 channel format which is used to create a realistic image of the sound.
Making it sound like it is coming from different directions in front of you.

Assuming that is correct why do we need Rear right and left channels?

All the High end Car Recievers have Front Left, Front Right, Rear left Rear Right and Sub do they actually compute
and create rear sound from a 2 channle source or do they just split the front sound and pipe it to the rear.

Sub I understand, to me it would make more since if high end recievers had High, Med, Low and Sub outputs but that is not the case on most units.
So riddle me this

I am listening to CD#007 or Mp3 Track #54112 what is being played out the rear channels ?

I think the Empeg unit just splits the front channles to the rear?

The reason I am asking it I am re-building my stereo and I was considering using the diamond s600s Speakers they have
A cross-over with a rear fill output for imaging this would allow me to use a two channle amp and relax the load on my
poor little 170Amp alt.

Stereo is just 2-channels recorded in a way to recreate spacial sound (like you wrote). All car stereos simply split the stereo channel and send a copy of the signal to the rear speakers to "fill out" the sound and also provide music for passangers. Some head units might do some sort of "virtual surround sound" with the rears, but it is just guess work on their part.

Running just one pair of RCAs back to a 4 channel amp does the same thing as running 2 sets of RCAs except that adjusting the "fade" (relative volume between front and rear) has to be with the gain controls on the amp instead of using the "fade" option on the headunit/empeg.

Nope I installed a HO alt already but if you add the headlights and idle current draw from my amps it doesn't leave much so I am trying to scale it back some.

Quote:

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my
poor little 170Amp alt.

I've had some blasting systems running on 90 amp alts. Is that a typo. I didn't think cars came with alts that big.

In fact, mp3s cannot have more than two channels, so even if you found something that was quadrophonic (which is rare, at best), mp3s wouldn't be able to encode all that information. I don't think WAV or FLAC have facilities for more than two channels, either. CDs certainly don't. The Ogg Vorbis format does, but I think it's currently unimplemented.

Of course, add onto all of that that the empeg doesn't have the capability of producing more than two discrete outputs (which are then split before preamplification), it's kinda moot anyway.