Why is 2 Channel better than multi-channel?

this one is harder to answer than one would think. It has been my experience that I prefer multi channel, but when I have company over the preferance is for 2-channel. Folks are more visual than audio and too many speakers make for more discussion of the system than of the movie...which might mean that we got it all wrong.

Brainwater...A fair question that I am not prepared to answer without some thought. It would be nice to share a list with rankings from 1 to 10.

IMHO every Tacet disc ranks near 10. I have some others (DVD-A and SACD)in the 6 to 8 range but I don't remember them off the top of my head. There are a few near 1. Oh well... it's a new thing and it may take a while to get it right.

I am also a "soundfield freak". My ability to hear the highest frequencies has surely diminished with age, but the ability to sense spatial effects is as good as ever, so it becomes more and more important.

As long as the mass market goes and buys HT-in-a-box setups audiophile recordings in MC will not be very accessible. Joe Best Buy likes to turn his head around when his cube shaped speakers play behind his head and say "Wow this sure sounds better than my old Techincs table!" For the very few who are able to afford good identical speakers all around and a room that has good acoustical treatments and size there will always be some great recordings available in SACD or DVD-A but those people don't buy enough to fuel a charge for high quality MC audio discs, especially when those that don't know better are still willing to spend and extra $5 over the cost of a regular CD to have a poorly-mixed MC recording. Give me VINYL! Acousticsounds.com can get virtually any album worth listening to and with a high quality turntable, a good amp, a good pre, and 2 good speakers you have the best sound you ever need. I don't want to be in the middle of the musicians, I want to sit in front of them and hear them play; unfortunately people like me are the minority so MC recordings that use the surrounds for ambiance are few and far between.

Bmw328iproject...Take a look at my post "Multichannel and why". Your reaction to multichannel is typical of people who have not experienced the full potential of the media, but have been exposed only to stupidly mastered discs.

Multichannel will succeed, if only because of automobiles, where rear speakers have long been standard equipment.

I do my part by buying every "audiophile" multichannel disc that I can lay my hands on.

As an avid car audio competitor I have to disagree with your thoughts on multi-channel music in cars. Even if the technology is released at a reasonable price for the car, it is still necessary that a center speaker be installed (which is normally a pretty hard install job that is very expensive) so unless tons of cars start coming off of the line with DVD-A or SACD players and compatible speaker setups it won't really take on. Also consider that DTS and DD5.1 decoders have been in cars now for 3 years but most people who have them still don't have the center channel. Why mix this perfectly to suit the car customers especially when the average car has pretty bad acoustics compared to home? Even if 10 years from now SACD or DVD-A multichanel audio is standard in all cars will most people use it? Will people care that their car could play a DVD-A disc when it can also play cheaper regular CD's? With more and more people downloading music and DVD-A and SACD unburnable will people really spend $20 and up for something they can get in 2 channels for free? Will these car audio setups be good enough that people require the new MC discs to be mixed well? Will artists spend even more time in the studios to ensure that their music is mixed properly in 5.1 when mixing in 2 has been hard enough already? 5.1 and up will all survive for movies but music is just not necessary and most people don't care enough about the mixing of MC music for it to ever become a true audiophile format. It will always be dominated by the best buy crowds who think it's cool but who wouldn't know stereo imaging if it hit them in the head.