I think you hit on something that's probably also true for Home Theater. While chips and features have gotten cheaper, the need for more and more speakers and wires and more difficult configurations keep pushing home theater decidedly into the high-end. This is no longer a hobby for the enthusiast/movie buff, but for those rich enough to afford a dedicated listening room.
Failure of Multichannel
This is a supplement to the currently revived thread on SACD.
The most important reason for SACD, DVD-A, and Blu Ray to fail was that all physical media couldn’t survive the rise of streaming.
There is a current attempt to revive it with non physical media, with Apple leading the way. I don’t have any data handy but I don’t think that it’s been particularly successful.
It was released at a time when baby boomers, the biggest consumers at the time, were raising families, perhaps having their first divorces. It having multiple speakers, with the entailed wiring, and new sources and amplification is a more daunting start up challenge than say buying our first two channel systems as young adults.
In the non classical/non jazz sphere a lot of multichannel releases were gimmicky, reminiscent of quad. Separate speakers for different instruments. This party trick could wear thin with time.Many serious listeners didn’t detect any sonic advantage, even when the mixes were more musical. I personally enjoyed the ambiance that a label such as Pentatone would place in rears, but many Classical lovers didn’t perceive this or thought it was gimmicky.
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- 12 posts total
- 12 posts total