@Sean Olive It is so refreshing to hear someone with your credentials say that Stereo is outdated and irrelevant today.
Sometimes Stereo really seems like the hill this industry wants to die on, with all its faults.
Dr. Toole has said this as well both in his book and
on this very forum, many times in fact: "What is needed to deliver a more credible sound field to listeners is a multichannel system. All else is compromise, especially two-channel stereo - so we play around attempting to extract from a directionally and spatially deprived system some sense of realism."
This is frequently skipped when discussing his work. I think what it boils down to is convenience. Building a multi-channel setup is *less convenient* than a stereo setup. You have to figure out where to put several more speakers, etc.
The part that bugs me is that the stereo-fixated folks rarely state that what they're looking for is primarily convenience. They still consider a stereo system to be an uncompromised audio system and pretend that you can reach the best experience possible using current technology with stereo speakers. But you can't. That's a fact that is as strongly proven as research can show, a fact that you cannot escape no matter how eloquently you wax about stereophonic soundstages and music and emotions.
The stereo experience is inferior to multi-channel in every way.
I used to be one of the folks who thought that music was just about stereo and home theatre was the only use for multi-channel. Then I experienced well-recorded multi-channel music(
2L recordings) on a decent system, and I was blown away. This was like nothing I had ever heard, on any stereo system, no matter how many hundreds of thousands had been spent on it. And all that at a fraction of the price of a pair of Magicos or whatever "truly high-end" speakers. So what's the point of trying to optimize for the last percentage point of the stereo experience? I do think stereo has its place. Not everybody
wants to fit a multi-channel system in their living room. And that's totally fine! I rely on stereo for several secondary systems.
The second argument is always that there's not enough content. I think upmixing covers this well enough to still beat stereo, but others disagree. That's fine; there are thousands of multi-channel classical and jazz albums and even the mediocre ones are better than nearly all stereo albums. If you're not a fan of those genres, it's true there's not much out there... yet. But the Atmos music production engine has begun and it is churning out material to the point that I've spoken to a talent manager at Universal who said they were basically recommending Atmos mixing to practically all of their bands and musicians for new albums.
My favourite composer is remixing *all* of his albums in Atmos this year. Yes, I am excited
Is multi-channel really a goal for many in the US? In the UK, and Europe in general I suppose, sitting rooms are too small for 5.1, let alone immersive audio. Not to mention that a room will look like a low-budget sci-fi set, unless you are fortunate enough to own a dedicated room, again unlikely in Europe...
Honestly, I don't think it would be hard to make the case that Home Theatre is a bigger market in North America nowadays than stereo hi-fi. The stereo hi-fi shop is a dying phenomenon. I only know of one in my entire major city, the rest all rely on home theatre offerings and demos to some extent or another. Even the one I'm thinking of has started selling home theatre gear in recent years...
Also, it's very important to understand that you can effectively duplicate multi-channel using headphones alone. It's computationally difficult and requires head tracking, but the Smyth Realiser
has proven that it can be done convincingly. There are other approaches as well, but this is fundamentally a computer/software challenge. So it's mostly a matter of making it accessible in products that the average person can buy. Apple is very clearly working on this, and I'm sure others are as well. There is big money involved in this, much more than the limited HT or Hi-Fi markets.
That's why so much music is being remixed in Atmos. Once the headphone piece is well-understood, folks will be able to enjoy multi-channel music on their headphones including the changes in sound that are created by small head movements which are really what make things very convincing. At that point, it may well be that large speaker systems will only be important in places where several people want to enjoy the material together. I'm looking forward to it, even if it obsoletes my Genelec surround system to some extent