Is There Multichannel in High-End Audios Future?
As far back as Walt Disney s Fantasia (1940), sound engineers were trying to achieve surround sound. Other experiments were tried off and on until we reached the Quadraphonic era of the 1970s, when all major labels (and a lot of minor ones) recorded some sessions in four channels: left and right front, and left and right rear. But vinyl proved a poor medium for reproducing the sound of those quad master tapes in the home. Quad faded, and then emerged a plethora of black boxes that would produce pseudo surround. Some of these were quite effective, others bizarre, but all of them proved that many people in the audio community, buyers and sellers alike, were interested in multichannel music. When laserdisc and DVD came along, surround sound rapidly became standard for home theaters. But even though SACD and DVD-Audio are reliable consumer formats through which to provide surround and center audio channels, it didn t catch on, becoming only a niche market. Why do we demand surround sound f
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