Feanor -

I totally agree with you about the virtues of multichannel. As Terrence and Kex have already mentioned, a good multichannel recording along with a properly timbre matched and calibrated multichannel system can reproduce specific facets of live performance that I have never heard properly reproduced by any two-channel system. In my listenings, much of this has to do with accurately rendering the hall ambience, specifically placing the seating location and conveying the size of the space, and stabilizing the side imaging and giving the front soundstage depth.

Doesn't matter how much people invest in a two-channel setup, there are specific things that two channels simply cannot do, and the limitations are evident by comparing a good multichannel mix with the two-channel mixdown of the same recording. For example, the San Francisco Symphony's Mahler series has been issued as 5.1 SACD/CD hybrid discs. As great as the two-channel mixes sound, the 5.1 tracks simply render an entirely different listening dimension that IMO is truer to how Davies Symphony Hall actually sounds (I typically attend 3-4 shows a year at Davies, and will go there again in two weeks for Mahler's Eighth [the epic Symphony of a Thousand]). From having attended one of those recorded Mahler concerts, I know that the mic position just forward of the podium. And accordingly, the 5.1 subjectively puts the listening on the stage at the conductor position, a perspective that two-channels simply cannot render.

With Mobile Fidelity's reissues of the Vox quad recordings done by Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz, the capture of the hall ambience gives the listener a sense of space that the two-channel mixdown simply does not convey as deliberately or consistently.

I think a big part of the resistance to multichannel, aside from inertia and how strongly a lot of consumers associate multichannel only with movies and not with music, is simply the difficulty of finding a properly done demonstration setup. Optimizing a multichannel setup takes a lot more than simply placing the speakers on the floor and tweaking with everything by ear. In order to get multichannel alignment to sound optimal, you have to get the timbre match right, the angling has to be optimal and symmetrical (much more difficult to do with five speakers than with two), and the processor settings have to be accounted for, as do issues with the room acoustics and location. This entails measuring and using things like measuring tapes, SPL meters, and protractors to get the reference points consistent.

Of all the stores I've visited in the Bay Area, only two of them demoed multichannel systems with the speakers in an alignment approximating the ITU-775 reference 5.1 alignment (which is what mixing studios use for multichannel music). The others used any number of different alignments (often just sitting on a shelf, or installed on the wall at an assymetrial alignment, or not timbre matched, etc.), none of which could properly render the full depth and imaging that multichannel mixes are capable of. And just in my time visiting store demo rooms, I've found that most of the receivers/processors are not set correctly, even at high end stores, because the customers will often tinker with the settings. If this is what people are using to judge multichannel audio, then it's no wonder they're so quick to dismiss its attributes.

Recording engineers are only beginning to learn what to do with the extra channels. Just as there are bad stereo mixes, you'll find bad 5.1 mixes as well. But, in order to get the multichannel playback right, there are simply more steps that require optimizing.