Harbinger of the future of 2-channel?


I just looked at the Sunfire website and noticed that Sunfire no longer makes 2-channel amplifiers. The minimum number of channels you can purchase from them is a 5-channel amp.

I remember when Apple came out with the I-Mac. It did not have a floppy drive. Even though I hadn't used a floppy in years, it still made me a little nervous that the machine didn't have one. It turns out that Apple was right on the money by eliminating the floppy. Email had rendered it useless.

Is home theater pushing 2-channel closer to the brink?

Does anyone think that the bulk of amplifier mfgs will follow suit and concentrate on multi-channel amps? I see that Audio Research has a new multi-channel preamp in its lineup.
128x128mitch4t
Albertporter,

It must really suck for that half person that only gets one earbud!

TIC
Hey, we're forgetting the true future of music reproduction - the cell phone ring tone! I hear them everywhere and it seems everyone I know has at least one. A guy at the gym has bunches of songs on his phone. I bet there are 20 times as many people interested in ring tones than multi-channel music.
Three, Five or seven channel systems reproducing 2 channel music sound like ass, even in two channel mode.
Then the one person with one earbud will be reduced to mono,which some 'still' enjoy.
David99,

If the one "leftover" earbud is downmixed to mono, he's in luck. If he's only getting one channel of a 2-channel track, he'll shortly revert to the "ring tone" method of music delivery!

Enjoy,

TIC