I don't see how stereo for music is a minority. We have 2 ears, most people use headphones nowadays, why would music have more channels? What's the benefit?
No. You misunderstood my point. The first minority is people that can tell the difference between good equipment and bad equipment... and the second minority is those for whom that is significantly important. Both my parents and my wife's parents have
actively prevented me from even
giving them free equipment I have just laying around because "a clock-radio with CD player does everything I need" and "my TV already sounds great."
For ~90% of consumers - the difference in the quality (or even quantity) of amplification in
any device (even truly horrible ones) is of very little importance to them. For the other ~10% it's meaningful, but of varying importance... and for maybe 10%
of those - it's one of the
primary criteria involved in their selection. For a similarly small number, the "audiophile credentials" might be the most important (but they mostly stick to magazine reviews, personal recommendations, and dealer propaganda).
My point is merely that
anyone on this forum is already in that minority of a minority - or they wouldn't be bothering to read (let alone post) anything here. For everyone else,
any device which allows them to play music or movies with a nominal level of fidelity, while not breaking the bank, is a winner. An even
smaller minority still, also feels that the immersive audio yielded by a matrixed multichannel setup is
superior for experiencing recorded musical performances - even those mastered and published as stereo (a premise backed up by the
research and experiences of
@Floyd Toole and many others).
Obviously that last minority does not include you - but
all of us are a distinct minority compared to the people that just want it to sound "good enough" - and
almost any AVR these days will do that. Plus they're available at the same place they bought their computer and television... so it's win-win in their book.