When I was young I really like surround sound. My dad had a 5.1 surround system and it was awesome at the time.
But now I get older I prefer simpler good ol' stereo. The whizzing spaceship sounds all around you get tiring after awhile.
Moreover, many surround sound design were so exaggerated it's annoying. It's fine for some 5 minutes tech demo to wow people but for a 2 hours movie? No thanks.
Surround sound.
sharehaha you can have my UE boom for netflix if I upgrade
shareI've never had a 5.1 system, but I do enjoy it in the cinema. Sometimes however I'll confuse a bang at the back of the theatre for being something actually in the room and it will throw me OUT of the movie so that isn't very good.
But other times I do like how something will move from the front to the back of the theatre as it flies away. It's really an artform and it depends on who did the 5.1 mixing.
I once did a 5.1 surround sound mix at my music college and it was a conversation between a guilty man and a demon and the demon says 'you thought you got away with it, but we've been watching, and we're all around you' and as it said 'all around you' I had the effect talk from from behind as well. That was cool.
Stereo isn't well suited for movies. If you have the speakers far enough to the left and right of the screen so that you get a meaningful amount of stereo separation, dialog and sound effects won't be anchored to the screen where they should be. If you have the speakers close together under or above the screen then it effectively becomes mono, which is fine, especially since most movies don't include significant stereo effects anyway (most music these days doesn't either, for that matter), but it does defeat the purpose of stereo.
Mono is ideal for most movies IMO, or, if noticeable stereo effects are included in the sound mix, then 3-channel sound is ideal (left, right, and center). Surround channels have never impressed me. All of the visuals are in front of you on the screen, so that's generally where the sound should be coming from. Sure, there are some scenarios where it makes sense to have some sound coming from other locations, such as in a boxing movie with the roar of the crowd coming from all around you, like it would if you were at a boxing match in real life, but scenarios like that in movies aren't enough to make me care about surround sound.
"If you have the speakers far enough to the left and right of the screen so that you get a meaningful amount of stereo separation, dialog and sound effects won't be anchored to the screen where they should be."
This is absolutely true: the center channel speaker of a home theater system is critical. I only have a stereo, and I NEVER play movies through it for this very reason: the dialogue is not anchored to the (TV) screen. Playing the stereo and the TV simultaneously is strangely unsatisfying. And as I said earlier, I mostly listen to movies via headphones.
Yeah, I tried it back in the mid 1990s when my friend got out of the Air Force and brought a nice Pioneer component stereo system with him. We were roommates for a while and I had a Hi-Fi stereo VCR so I thought it would be awesome to connect it to his stereo system. The effect was bizarre and I quickly went back to using the built-in TV speaker. The sound quality of the TV speaker wasn't anywhere near as good as that stereo system, but at least the people onscreen didn't seem like ventriloquists throwing their voice to the far left and far right.
I currently use a set of powered Logitech 2.1 PC speakers for movies, but I have the pair of stereo speakers close together under the screen, so it's effectively mono, and it anchors the sound to the screen. I obviously miss out on any stereo effects that may be in a movie, but I don't lose any sleep over it.