Surrounded

Atmos and surround are wonderful for movies, but they aren't the same experience as listening to a proper two-channel system. 

The difference between the two is more fundamental than the channel count. In a great two-channel system, the musicians are on stage in front of you. The soundstage rises between and behind the speakers, the performers take their positions, and you sit in your seat as the audience. The convention is the concert hall, the jazz club, the recording studio's control room — and stereo, for all its constraints, evolved precisely to recreate that experience for someone sitting in front of two speakers. It's the live performance brought home, with the listener in the seat the engineer chose.

Immersive audio does something different and just as valid in its own way. Atmos places you inside the mix. Sounds come from above, behind, and around you. Instead of being in the audience, you're in the band, or in the middle of the soundscape, or wherever the mixing engineer decided to put you. For some material — large ensemble live recordings, certain electronic music, ambient productions — that experience can be genuinely thrilling. It just isn't the same experience as a two-channel system, any more than vinyl is the same experience as digital. Both can be wonderful.

They're different art forms.

For music, when I sit down to really listen, I want the musicians on stage. I want to forget the room and find myself transported to wherever the recording was made. Two channels, properly set up, do that for me in a way no immersive mix has ever quite duplicated. The soundstage extends out beyond the speakers, the performers take their positions, and the music breathes with the natural geometry the engineer captured. That's the experience I built my system to deliver, and at the end of the day it's the one I keep coming back to.

For movies? Where do I sign? My home theater is built for exactly what its name says, and immersive surround brings the cinematic experience home in a way two channels never could. Helicopters fly overhead. Footsteps cross behind you. 

Two channels for music. Multichannel for movies. Each one perfect at the work that's actually theirs.