Why is 2 Channel better than multi-channel?

Nope. It was a purely visceral response.

Kal

I have no idea what your budget is, but home theater receiver that provides pre-outs for each channel would allow you to get a 2 channel amplifier for your main speakers. My personal opinion is that spending a bunch of money for surround sound speakers is far less important than building your system for 2 channel listening. Movies have a way of shifting the focus from the audio a bit.

Unlike the vast majority of the responses in this thread, at least Stehno ends with IMO. Although I believe his response is a meaningless diatribe of clueless words. He's obviously never heard a quality multichannel SACD recording played back in a quality multichannel system. Like the majority of the two channel proponents in this thread.

IMHO of course.

Thanks for the support, Russ. I think.

So I guess the point you were trying to make was, if the water coming into your home is toxic and you hate to shower in it, your thinking is to add 5 more shower heads surrounding you in the shower will make things better? And next year you'll add two more shower heads and when you've really advanced in your plumbing skills you plan to install 23 more shower heads?

Isn't that logic what some might call silly or unbright?

I'm there for you too buddy.

-IMO

The type of reasoning put forth by Stehno is flawed and ultimately wrong. He incorrectly focuses upon the playback side of the equation. The real question is whether 2 channels of audio is sufficient to record the sound of an instrument playing in a real space? As a practical matter it's done all the time and with good results, but it's not perfectly done. There are at least 10 different microphone techniques for two channel stereo recording (spaced omni, X/Y, Blumlein, Jecklin, binaural, etc.) and that's a tip off to the problem. There are too many techniques. If one of the techniques really worked as opposed to just doing an okay job, then there wouldn't be a need for such a variety. Everyone would just use the one recording technique that worked perfectly. Now if you can't capture the sound of an instrument playing in a real space with only two channels, then it stands to reason that a two channel playback of the same is faulty.

If you're willing to settle for a rough approximation, let's use Stehno's 15-20%, of the sound of an instrument playing in a hall, then 2 channel playback is a proven technology that works well. Personally, I'm more than satisfied with just 2 channels. However, if you really want to fully capture and reproduce all the sound being produce in a hall, you'll need more than 2 channels.