Am I totally nuts or just a bit off?

Imagine: If the internet had been around in the late 50s everyone would have been discussing how stereo and Solid State was ruining HiFi and young people- a conspiracy by music shops to make us buy two of everything.
I had an Uncle that was into HiFi. That must be how I was influenced during my formative years... He had a stereo console in the 60s and moved up to a Pioneer Quadraphonic receiver in the 70s with a Dual tt. So extrapolating speaker count from a single in the 50s to two speakers in the 60s and 4 speakers in the 70s, we should be up to 64 speaker systems today. Let's see, if my uncle were still alive today, I could show him my 7.1HT system that is mostly for the kids. Hey, that HT system has 20 drivers when I add them all up. I guess the speaker marketing guru's have been pretty successful after all over the decades.

A stereo record has almost twice the amount of information packed into the groove as compared to a mono recording. Something must have been lost to gain the L+R information. Tracking has to be easier for a mono recording. It's kinda of like a high quality B&W photo; the rich textures, the sharpness and detail are so good that it is hard to imagine it in color, or if there is a color version it seems to take away from the picture. I heard some old mono recordings once on a buddy's Quad ESLs with Quicksilver amps. I could imagine a top notch mono system consisting of a Quad ESL with a mono tube amp and using one side of a dual mono type preamp. The Quad ESL being a good choice in my mind because it is a single point source- and it is fast.