I think that the idea that surround is not good enough
for music , good enough to matter, really does
not make sense. This is more or less like restricting
the idea of music to what works well enough in stereo
to be all right. But that is not all music, and indeed
for example it does not include orchestral music.
Of course we have all experienced this kind of "reasoning"
in practice. When I had electrostatics with limited bass
and dynamics, I hardly ever listened to big orchestral
music(in recorded form). It did not work well with that
system so I just listened to other stuff(even though
I really like big orchestra music). When all there
were were turntables and before I got a Nakamichi
disc centering turntable, piano music was a
problem(on account of off centered records). Once
I got a Nakamichi (and digital came along), piano
music became a joy again, instead of a watery imitation.
And so I listened to more of it.
What has happened to the audio industry in my view is
that for more than fifty years, they have dealt almost
exclusively with stereo. So people have evolved in their
tastes to suit the medium. They listen only to music
that works in stereo, and even when they do listen
to things like orchestral music that obviously do not
really work right in stereo, they have become adjusted to completely
unrealistic presentations of "the music" (which really
means only the notes and some of the dynamics since most
of the rest is pretty screwed up). They have come to accept
stereo on its own merits and have simply given up on
its sounding real.
Of course this happened with mono. People accepted it, completely
unrealistic though it is.
Then stereo showed up and all of a sudden mono seemed sort of
Nowheresville.
Surround could have had the same effect for music. It could have raised
one's expectations of realism and made some kinds of music sound nearly
right in a big way. But for various
reasons, it did not happen. For one thing, the pop music industry had
moved
into a realm where people no longer cared about the acoustics of the
venue. "Music" became something that was not anchored in acoustic reality
with a real venue.
But a lot of music is so anchored. And for that , surround done
right is still valuable.
But done right is the operative phrase.
Robert
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