So, there's another possibility, the road we didn't go down: use a sound field representation based on spherical harmonics. You'd get something roughly the qual

So, there's another possibility, the road we didn't go down: use a sound field representation based on spherical harmonics. You'd get something roughly the quality of Atmos with just 4 channels. It's a shame cinema didn't go this route, as trivial circuits can fold it down to quad or stereo, but more elaborate setups can render it specific to any arbitrary speaker geometry that's desired.