Is the seated-centered solo listening to music a dated tech?

Multicell horns are used to reduce the level of early reflections in the listening space via tight control of their dispersion pattern. Most famously, the Altec 203B 'Long Throw' 2-Cell with a 20x40 degree pattern was 6dB hotter at 100 ft than other multicell with a 40X100 pattern. They had unmatched reach and clarity before distributed delay systems, but the same goal: improve the direct to reflected sound balance for improved speech intelligibility. What audiophiles call 'detail'. Same goal in the studio: more direct, less reverberant field. As for listening fatigue, sorting out the direct sound from the reverberant field would seem to be far more strenuous than listening in stereo. Suggest reading "The Language Game" by Christiansen And Chater, C. 2022 for a good description of how the brain  parses the sound field for language purposes.

I’ve been saying all along that Ohm Walsh speakers get it right and most others are terminally flawed out of the gate in terms of dispersion and coherence. Most of the world got it wrong! 😉. Though some still do way better than others. Stereo or mono. 

We started with the one speaker approach. One microphone too. You can still get one. It’s called the phonograph. 

So here we go again, Kenjit, John or whatever.  A bunch of vague, untestable statements and no offer of proof.

OP, show us your system, show us your music and what sounds better to you.  Be specific.

You neglect to mention one of the most wonderful things about stereophonic and surround sound -- its ability to literally immerse a listener in a field of sound. To construct a virtual (or highly fanciful) replica of the venue where the music was recorded -- whether the process was done naturally or by hook and by crook.

In any event, when I lived in L.A. I'd take my acoustic guitar and fiddle to places like bars & pizza joints and jam with fellow musicians. We'd sit in a circle and play endlessly. Sometimes the establishment would give us free pizza & beer. Sometimes we'd  get a few bucks from folks in the audience. Of course, we didn't deserve it, but we never threw anything back, either. Long story short, from our listening positions we enjoyed true 360* surround sound. From left to right to front to back.