MultiChannel too complicated for most...

I'll bite - here's my true confessions. My perceptions are based primarily on experience with multi-channel over the last 2-3 years (before that I simply didn't bother with multi-ch).

Inhibitors in rank order of significance:
1) Cost of the equipment - primarily the pre-pro that can compare to a good 2 channel pre.
2) Sound quality (results) - I simply haven't found the results to be as satisfying as 2 channel. The soundstage isn't as natural or vivid. (this may be a result of my lack of competence in set-up . . . see #3)
3) My lack of knowledge of how to set up and properly calibrate a multi-channel setup. When it's done for multichannel source material such as DD5.1 movies, it's easy, but for 2 channel analog material (vinyl) - it's a mystery to me, and I haven't the time to invest in learning this.
4) complexity - it is more work to calibrate 5 speakers than 2.

Backgound:
I presently have a dual purpose room with home theater. I'm using a Lexicon DC-1 for pre-pro - which fits my budget. I'm running a TAD150 preamp for my 2 channel, with the Lexicon mains running passthru to my Front L/R speakers. I have Von Schweikert speakers all around - VR4 genIII F-R/L, LCR-15 center, VR3 Rr-L/R , and Tower of Power SW. My amps are Electron Kinetics Eagles all around.

I have tried using this for multi-ch music and have been woefully un-satisfied and believe to approach the quality of my TAD150 2 channel - I'd have to break the bank on a pre-pro.

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Being long in this hobby and disinterested in HT and totally unconvinced by mc, I see no reason to undertake the expense of adding channels.

I’ve always interpreted the word simple in system listings to circuit design.
Less is more philosophy in audio circuit design often means better components, capacitors, resistors, transformers, diodes, switches, relays, exc.
One only needs to look at the internals tube or SS of a simple system and see what Im talking about. Multi-channel systems are difficult for manufactures to keep cost down using expensive high tolerance parts in their design, which is often quite complex to those of a simple 2 channel system.

It is not simple or cheap to get a multichannel system set up right, and not all MC discs realize the potential of the media. For music the 5.1 speaker array, designed for movies is not ideal. The 2+2+2 array (see www.222sound.ch) is better. Too bad that audiophiles in this country won't support it. Blame the WAF. One surprisingly large genre of music, antiphonal, simply cannot be reproduced without MC.

Those who write they don't like multichannel (NOT multi-channel) music don't indicate what kind of music they prefer. I absolutely LOVE the new MC recordings of Classical music. They really do enhance the (artificial, of course) feeling of being in the hall with the musicians. Except in very rare cases, there's only ambient hall sound in the surround channels, and I use diffuse-sounding speakers for that--see my System.

My system is not complex, with a multidisc player, a 6-channel preamp, and several poweramps and speakers, but one piece of it, the conrad-johnson 6-channel tubed preamp, is expensive. I guess it's complicated in the sense that it has far more pieces of IC and speakercable and more channels of amplification--10--than most 2-channel systems, but I've managed to figure it out, and I'm sure the vast majority of 2-channel lovers, too, could.

I combined my audio and video systems a few years ago, and this not-as-good-as-2-plus-2-plus-2 5.1-channel system sounds not just good but FABULOUS, TYVM. :-)
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