What's the point of stereo?

When stereo first came out there were arguments against and it and it was thought of as a gimmick, and a lot of recordings were done in mono because of that (The beatles for example) even though stereo was already available...the theory behind stereo is that two microphones placed in the correct positions while recording a live performance, pick up not only the sound of the instruments but the ambience of the room, and other sounds and location clues that the human ear and brain are able to interpret... some of these cues are available in a mono recording but even more are available in stereo if done properly, in nature the brain determines the distance and direction of a sound by the delay in time it takes the sound reach the right ear and the left ear also sounds from the rear will have a different timber due to the shape of the ear...these cues are then reproduced by the stereo player in playback, because of the way we distinguish direction and distance not only can the listener here the instruments but he can localize the direction of the instruments, he can perceive the acoustics of the room that the recording was done in.. the size of the room, a sound stage is created withe depth and width and much more...This is why Hi fidelity became so important Fidelity meaning true to the source, the theory is the better the mike and recording gear, the better the reproduced recording follows the original sound the better and more clues human hearing can pick up, reproducing a sound indistinguishable from the original recording, and a live performance, with the right gear,... or so the theory goes...while surround sound is artificial, it is some computer chip telling you what information you should hear and not hear more that likely there was never any live sound that it correspond to and if there was the cues have been lost to totally changed.hence totally made up artificial sound designed by some technician at a sound board who barely gets mentioned in the credits....and it is never true to the instruments or original source because its all digitized computer talk with no connection to the real world we live in, so it doesn't matter who is playing the sax Charlie Parker or Joe Blow your not going to hear any difference anyway.......The problem is that even stereo recording use processing now adays and they can be quite pleasurable and realistic sounding... they may not be as true to the source but that does not seem to be a problem to as many people now adays....

You only find surround sound on DVD and Blu Ray disc movies. There are a few CD that are decoded in Dolby or DTS for surround. 99.9 % of music source in the market are all in stereo. The main reason for going to stereo versus mono is that you can distinguish most of the instrument that are being played. In the very high end audio, they are mainly in stereo. You can find a turntable that are selling for over $25,000 and speakers upward in the $100,000. The first surround sound in the market was the quad, and that did not last long (70"s). The followed by surround sound decoded by Dolby which was also in four channel (80"s), followed by the Dolby Pro which added the center channel. Finally the Dolby digital which is now the 5.1, then came DTS (Digital Theater Sound). The latest is the 7.1 which all of this is only on blu ray disc movies. All this will depend on the producer who decides how it should sound like in theaters or your home. The first Digital Surround Processor to mix stereo sound to multi channel was produced by Yamaha in the mid 80's (DSP-1). Which you connect a stereo input and then connect it to several power amplifier and speakers (2 front left and right, center, subwoofer and then 2 back left and right speakers). IT was to simulate the sound from Club, Church, etc.. It would be nice to have everything in surround sound. But there is no demand for it, and the cost of having one will go up. Hope this will help you out.