"George M. Middius" wrote in message
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Sander deWaal said:

It's just the split budget.
$2000 buys you two good speakers or 5 mediocre ones.

You seem to be missing the overall point of surround sound. Let us consult
an authoritative source for guidance.


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On making things more difficult than they need to be:

"Well, [speakers] do need to be properly set up and adjusted, and the room
needs to be decent, and the surround speakers need to be properly
positioned. Setting up those parameters is considerably more involved than
what is required to get optimum performance from only two speakers."

This advice is entirely consistent with the Tweako-Freako philosophy of
never being satisfied.

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On deluding oneself with visions of the unattainable:

"[stereo sound is] like a window, the sound is up front and you do not get
the large-scale hall reverb where it is supposed to be: around you."

This observation reveals the truth that once you are surrounded, you can't
tell good quality from mediocre.

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On adhering to a philosophy at all costs, despite any contravening
evidence:

"... two-channel recordings have an egregious form of distortion
themselves.
By compressing the hall acoustics into the frontal area, they are severely
distorting what we would hear at a live performance. This distortion is
far
more of a problem than the processor-applied 'distortion' that I prefer."

Slavish devotion to principle makes a good drone.

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Now, having reviewed these pearls of wisdom, don't you think you should
revise your opinions and fall into line?

Thank you for your input.
I think I will try myself to listen to good stereo and surround to make my
own judgement. At the moment I am going to choose an open option which means
buying stereo with an option to upgrade it to surround in the future. I
think this should be quite a good solution...