Quote Originally Posted by thepogue
And to be honest that's not very much...postioning is even more a factor when more speakers are used...I enjoyed listening to Steely Dan's Asia on 5.1 and one song the female backing vocials we much much stronger in the rears...now move 4 or 5 inches left, right, forward or rear and your subject to have some (ill)effect on the overall sound....so adding channels wouldn't negate that..would it? Just one ohter point...if your two channel speaker placement is correct and your source and equipment is up to par...you shouldn't have such a narrow image field...if you do...time for some tweakin' I'd say...

Peace, Pogue
Actually, Steely Dan's Aja album has yet to come out in 5.1, and at the moment, it cannot be released in 5.1 because the original multitrack masters for two of the songs on that album are missing, so you must be thinking of something else.

If you're thinking of Gaucho, that's actually a poorly done surround mix precisely because it was mixed with the vocalists and instruments emanating out of each channel like point sources. It was the first 5.1 project that Eliot Scheiner ever mixed, and he's improved a lot since then. The 5.1 mixes that he did for Steely Dan's Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go albums are much better examples of surround music that more appropriately use the surround and center channels to solidify the side imaging (impossible for two-channel to do this) and render consistent and more deliberate depth and spatiality to the overall sound.