...you can either listen to and appreciate the music...in stereo or even, horrors...mono...or listen to the effects..." wow man!!!......the guitar just went through my head!!!"...multi-channel is great if you want performance art...or big noises with your mechanical lizards...but then again, with some of the cr@p I've been subjected to in the guise of "music", something needs to be provided since there is little or no substance.

Back a-ways you could purchase ambience extractors which simply took out-of-phase info and supplied spatial cues...until the record schmucks realize that's all that's really needed, return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear...to the early days of stereo when you could get locomotives, speeding cars and ping-pong games zipping between speakers...except now, in an effort to provide the ultimate in "you are there" realism, some pinhead's cell-phone will be heard somewhere just over your left shoulder!

All the hoopla over multi-channel and HT and the like is just another example of the industry taking basically the same old catalog(bought and paid for hundreds of times over) and deriving new and higher profits from the SOS...enabling CEOs and other Eisner-types to get another few mil in perks and bonuses...

jimHJJ(...you never really needed it 'til they toldya' that ya' did...)