Chris, while attending a training session, many years ago, given by Harmon Kardon, they explained the benefit of wide bandwidth in amplifiers. At the time they were only one a few companies that had bandwidth ratings up to 100kHz. They said it was for harmonics. For example, when middle C is struck on a piano it vibrates the other strings up and down from it. Phono cartridges are capable of reproducing very high frequencies as well as good home speakers. It would seem if analog is a 100% signal that more sampling would bring you closer to representing that 100%. And maybe these harmonics are what people are missing when listening to digital.

From what I understand of 5.1 music they do not use the extra channels for ambient reproduction but there is actually musical information in the rear channels. Is this true? If so, 2 channel may not be perfect but how can you fool yourself into thinking you are at a show with a guitar behind you in one channel and a trumpet in the other rear channel?

Terry, it is interesting to hear you confess you use your ears to evaluate sound when you tell those on the HT forum their system is crap if they don't use a SPL meter and measure every little thing. What is even more interesting is that your buddy mtrycraft is trying to convince me that 3dB difference is barely audible at all.