Wanna take it to the next level? Buy MORE speakers!

This conversation imho is a waste of time.

Nevertheless……

Less is almost always better.

A quality system - cartridge, arm, table, SUT, preamp, amp, 2 speakers - set up properly in a properly treated room can give you holographic sound.

I recently discovered someone in my neck of the Hudson Valley who is obsessive about tube sound, has spent over $100K on his system, and has a basement full of thousands of tubes that he buys and sells online. He came over the other day with about 150 tubes for some tube rolling in my Beard preamp. The tubes in that amp all have at least 20 years of use on them.

I have to say: man, was I happy to find out that a Phillips made Ampex for $50 tamed Laura Nyro’s voice on New York Tendaberry way better than the Mullard for $300. But I digress.

After we settle on a set of tubes, this guy is sitting in the sweet spot, then wandering around the room. He then he says that as he was coming over, he wasn’t sure what to expect, since I had told him that I use Altec 604Cs (I think he has Wilson Puppies). He says he is astounded by the depth of the sound stage: forward, backward, and to either side of the speakers. He - like others have - volunteers the word holographic. A surround sound. It was particularly noticeable on the Belafonte at Carnegie Hall double LP, as it is on other live LPs: Sticky Fingers at the Fonda Theatre for example.

He at first says it must be the vinyl, and he will have to go out and get himself a turntable. I point out to him that he knows better, for starters, why obsess over tubes if it’s just the vinyl?

And I did it for less than half of what he spent.

Imho his room is a problem: it’s not dedicated, there’s all sorts of stuff going on in there that’s not controlled. In my room, all my walls are insulated with 6” of rock wool, the ceiling with 14”, all covered with burlap. The floors with throw rugs. Then I add pictures on the wall as and where needed to brighten up the sound.

The speakers that he was initially skeptical of do have some important features that his speakers lack. A: they are coaxial. A single point source greatly reduces phasing problems. B: they are very efficient. Efficient speakers are reputed to be more lively and dynamic.

To help with phasing issues, I have two little boxes inserted in the signal path that allows me to correct for that.

Being as insecure as most of us here at audiogon are about whether we are getting the most that we can out of our systems, after we are done rolling (he amazingly leaves an extra 4 tubes to try out for a few weeks), I ask him what he thinks, and he says the detail, the depth, the timbre, texture etc is as good as it gets, we are just dialing in that last 1 or 2 percent with the tubes to nail it.

Jon Specter may disagree: he’s replacing all the caps in the Beard next week.

All by way of saying.

TWO speakers. If the thinking behind coaxial matters, then every 1/64th of an inch matters. It’s hard enough getting two speakers positioned properly. 4? 6? 8?

Phoooougheaaaadaaaaabouuuuughditttttt!

Multichannel can be really fun if you have the right setup.  I don't use a crappy receiver - I use an Oppo BDP-105 outputting multichannel analog into a Marantz pre-pro set at pure analog and then XLR out to good amps.  The sound is quite good...doesn't replace stereo but it's very good.

The main issue is lack of discrete multichannel material. You need a large collection of SACDs, DVD-A, Blu-Rays...and I also have about 500 SQ and DTS surround discs from the 70s and 80s. So, maybe 1000 possible surround choices.

I still mostly listen to stereo, but the multichannel stuff is very fun.  

With regard to holographic sound I once own a very rare piece of equipment that was used to master the first Starwars movie. It was a Bedini with a couple of nobs that could expand or center the sound. Carver then mass marketed a holographic generator. When you hear holographic sound in a recording it just studio glitz. I like it, but it’s not organic. A live recording might sound “real” because it’s also capturing the wall reflections. Most modern cinemas have front speakers and side speakers. Some even have transducers in the seats. I don’t like that set up, but it’s just entertainment. Two speakers of different types might complement each other and will give more SPL. I’ve had fun wiring up old speakers in series or parallel, but I’ll try to stack them vertically to try and maintain a stereo image. Speakers all over the room is not my cup of tea. Recently I wired up a pair of Philharmonic bookshelves to the bass crossover of my Vandersteen 3a and had great results driven by an Atma-sphere MAI-mk III and bi-wired through an anticable ZERObox. In this case my solid core wires were too short to stack vertically and the monitors sat at ear level slightly in front of and to the center of the 3a z.

2 channel and surround are different

They are not different. The ultimate hope of a 2 channel rig (as you spend more and more and more) is that it hopes to provide the soundfield, spatial nuance and detail characteristic of a correctly setup multichannel rig.

For instance, as you spend more and more on a purist dac, there is code hidden away in fpga with the hope of creating the above mentioned, restricted by the challenges of achieving so with 2 speakers.

You will hear all kinds of detail in a multichannel rig (that you simply never heard in a 2 channel rig) by virtue of how some multichannel codecs uunpack your favorite stereo recordings....there are multiple speaekers assisting with this. Try an upmixer that comes with a multichannel processor that’s worth its salt and the right amount of correctly setup speakers. It should become obvious.

When 2 channel guys are in hot pursuit of cost no object "3D", etc, it continues to be a bit laughable for the same reason....Spending more and more up the wrong tree will continue to provide a gimped outcome. I could put up my multichannel rig (i didn’t even spend that much on it) against ANY cost no object stereo rig and it will run circles aound the latter. It would probably lose, however, to some guy’s ultra high-end multichannel rig, i suppose...but, some guy’s 2 channel? nah, it ain’t losing...

Some of you guys are not really strapped for cash.....try something different than what you’re used to, research the newer technologies and tweak it out...

I've listened to pretty much every configuration (5.1 through 13.4.4) and while it provides a cool effect it doesn't move me in the way that even a mediocre two channel system does. Movies? Sure - give me that immersive feeling with planes flying overhead, the sound of bullets ricocheting through the side, rear, and atmos speakers - it makes sense for this kind of foley info to come from all sides. For music however it just sounds gimmicky and fake. I'm speaking for me of course and shouldn't influence even a single member of this forum. I also don't have much interest in others telling me what I should and shouldn't enjoy. Like ketchup on hot dogs or black licorice. Someone making a face and pretending to be disgusted doesn't impact my enjoyment one whit. Plenty of people here describe the process of procuring, cleaning, and listening to a record (including having to get up to flip it after 22 or so minutes) to be a horrible, exhausting experience. I can't get enough of it, and the joy of hearing music come from a spot where a speaker isn't still seems magical to me. There is an evolutionary reason our ears are shaped the way they are and two channel setups are optimized to take advantage of that physiology.