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> most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most Wait, is this true? I’ve always thought I was in the minority for “still” having “just” 2.0. I’ve been needing

> most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most Wait, is this true? I’ve always thought I was in the minority for “still” having “just” 2.0. I’ve been needing to upgrade my receiver for a while, but mostly putting it off since I can’t find a decent 2.0 one with a good number of inputs. Almost every receiver is (5+2n).1 these days (where n >= 0). I feel so behind the times in my simple 2.0 system, even though I think it sounds better than almost any other setup I’ve heard — and my speakers are probably 30 years old! So I really don’t care if I’m behind the times, but would still be nice to find someone produce a first-class 2.0 receiver.

vel0city 4y ago
A massive number of people don't have anything other than the speakers included in their TV. The next massive percentage of people maybe have a sound bar, maybe with an included subwoofer. A tiny, minuscule, microscopic percentage of consumers will have an external receiver. Maybe they'll have 5.1 on that. Maybe they'll have 9.2. An extremely small fraction, practically a rounding error, will have higher than that. Most of my extended family is decently well off in the US. Among a dozen or so households, I'm one of I think two with an actual receiver, and I've only got a 5.1 setup. A few have a sound bar on their fancy movie watching setup. Most of my friends rely on the included speakers on their TVs. Its just not a priority for a lot of people, even people with enough income to afford vacation homes and boats and what not.
- zaroth 4y ago
  What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap and easy to setup. Of course that’s far from the truth, but good sound is so worth it! Being able to truly enjoy music, movies, we live in an incredible era for content, video is regularly available in 4K and people can play that! Why is sound stuck so far behind?
  - rocqua 4y ago
    One big downside of 5.1 is that you now have 6 speakers to place all around you. Depending on the room and layout, that can be hard to impossible to do without looking ugly, or even to do at all.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    > Why is sound stuck so far behind? I know people who have as their primary method of watching movies and TV is on an iPad. Its not that the tech is stuck so far behind, its a matter of priorities. They just don't care to invest the time/space/effort/money into a fancy sound system. Not even always that they couldn't, just that they don't bother doing so. Sure, many could easily afford a fancy sound system. But they don't care enough to bother figuring out what to buy, figuring out how to connect it all together, going through the whole effort of making sure to use the right remote to get the sound working right, etc. They just want to press play on the one device when they feel like watching a movie, even if its not the best experience possible. I know a few couples who do own a nice sound system. One partner never bothers to turn on the receiver or use any of the extra devices, they'll just use the built-in apps on the TV and turn the TV speakers up instead of bothering to turn on the fancy sound system already plugged in and otherwise ready to go. Its just not worth it to them to figure it out, so they don't bother using it.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      Mine's on my laptop with headphones. I don't even have a TV, let alone a fancy sound system setup (and have no clue what those numbers everyone's throwing around even refer to).
      - vel0city 4y ago
        And that's perfectly fine, don't get me wrong. If that gets you enjoyment from the media you watch, that's great. You definitely don't need a fancy theater room to be happy. And honestly if it's a nice laptop and a good pair of headphones you're probably ahead of a lot of people watching on a cheap TV with built in speakers. Once again, not that it truly matters.
      - OJFord 4y ago
        X.Y (e.g. 5.1) means X wide range speakers and Y subwoofers. You also sometimes see it like S/T.Y where S+T = X, and it refers to front/surround speakers. There are standard values and configurations, such as 2.0 (aka stereo) both at the front, 2.1, 3.1 adds a centre channel mostly for on-screen dialogue positioned close to screen, 5.1 (3/2.1) adds a second stereo pair behind you, 7.1 - adds an extra surround stereo pair between the others, etc.
  - treve 4y ago
    In my case I have a great receiver, but only 2 speakers. To get surround I'll need to put speakers in places that get in the way and run cables in place where I don't want to see them.
  - avereveard 4y ago
    Well for one I'm not going to run cables everywhere and the other solutions have their faults: wireless satellite lag sound, and still need a power cable; battery operated satellites require constant maintenance.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      Yea, unfortunately, my old 5.1 surround system of my bachelor days fails the “wife test.” Currently, to get all the channels the sound mixers give you, you need 6 ugly black boxes with speakers in them spread around your living room and another big black box receiver. And all the speaker wire everywhere. Yuck! Even if you hide the wires in the wall and use ceiling mounted speakers it’s still intrusive and ugly.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    I watch movies for the story. 480p and my laptop speakers are enough for that. I enjoyed movies just the same when they were 700mb DivX with 128kps mp3 sound.
    - badpun 4y ago
      Yep, same here. Most of the movies which depend on "immersion" are just horrible. It doesn't matter if the dinosaur in "Jurrasic World Dominion" sounds realistic if I already want to quit the movie after seeing the first 10 minutes.
    - elteto 4y ago
      It’s an audiovisual art, it’s way more than just the story. Have you seen Barry Lyndon in a 4K OLED TV? You should.
  - numpad0 4y ago
    I think our auditory system just isn't great. Compressed formats with bitrate of 320kbps is borderline indistinguishable from raw formats in audio, while it will be borderline unbearable in video.
    - mgdlbp 4y ago
      That's a really insightful way of putting it. My first reaction was, 'well, duh...', but then I realized that I'd taken for granted the fact that digital video of (arbitrarily defined) adequate quality must have a much higher information rate than audio of the same. But surely there are animals for which the opposite is true!
  - whywhywhywhy 4y ago
    > and easy to setup. We all know this isn’t gonna be true. Just another thing to faff about with that will stop working and have to be reset. Even the effort of finding how to place it around my furniture doesn’t seem worth the effort to hear sound from different directions.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap and easy to setup. It takes up space that some of us honestly don't have, especially people living in city apartments (like I do). And I used to have a separate sound system at a past place, some many years ago, I don't think I'd be able to set it up again, it felt like black magic to set it up back then, it will surely feel the same (and more) now.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    Speaking as someone with a 5.1 system they haven't set up: Getting the rear speakers' cables installed into your walls is expensive, and requires you own your home. Getting a room large enough you can get several guests between the speakers without some of them ending up much closer to the speakers than others is even moreso.
  - stuaxo 4y ago
    It's a pain though, you have to take the time to setup the extra speakers, cable them and etc and have the space to do this, and of course the extra expense. Yes, it's cheap to some software developer on HN, but if you are on an average income it's harder to justify.
- Freak_NL 4y ago
  That pretty much sums it up. I wouldn't even be surprised if the percentage of households with anything over 2.0 has dropped in the past two decades. Of those people with an external receiver, a significant percentage will deliberately have a stereo setup, often used for listening to music. Good speakers, but no surround sound.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    I used to watch movies on an absurdly excessive 3000-watt sound system, equipped with dual 18" subwoofers... but I never bothered to get a surround decoder.
- wazoox 4y ago
  And among those with a 5.1 setup, most have the speakers placed haphazardly around the room and not at all as required for a correct rendering.
c0nsumer 4y ago
I'm with you. After having a nice 5.1 system 20 years ago, and a space set up for it, I now have fallen back to nice 2.0 or 2.1 systems. Decent amp with a DAC to some quality speakers and a sub and poof: really great audio in a simple system that doesn't require running wires everywhere. With the advent of cheap, decent, small single-channel amps it's really easy to do something like Apple TV -> HDMI -> TV -> TOSLINK -> Amp -> Speakers and be done with it. (I know I could go Apple TV right to the Amp, but passing it through the TV mitigates image-audio delay.)

vel0city 4y ago

A massive number of people don't have anything other than the speakers included in their TV. The next massive percentage of people maybe have a sound bar, maybe with an included subwoofer. A tiny, minuscule, microscopic percentage of consumers will have an external receiver. Maybe they'll have 5.1 on that. Maybe they'll have 9.2. An extremely small fraction, practically a rounding error, will have higher than that. Most of my extended family is decently well off in the US. Among a dozen or so households, I'm one of I think two with an actual receiver, and I've only got a 5.1 setup. A few have a sound bar on their fancy movie watching setup. Most of my friends rely on the included speakers on their TVs. Its just not a priority for a lot of people, even people with enough income to afford vacation homes and boats and what not.

zaroth 4y ago
What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap and easy to setup. Of course that’s far from the truth, but good sound is so worth it! Being able to truly enjoy music, movies, we live in an incredible era for content, video is regularly available in 4K and people can play that! Why is sound stuck so far behind?
- rocqua 4y ago
  One big downside of 5.1 is that you now have 6 speakers to place all around you. Depending on the room and layout, that can be hard to impossible to do without looking ugly, or even to do at all.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Why is sound stuck so far behind? I know people who have as their primary method of watching movies and TV is on an iPad. Its not that the tech is stuck so far behind, its a matter of priorities. They just don't care to invest the time/space/effort/money into a fancy sound system. Not even always that they couldn't, just that they don't bother doing so. Sure, many could easily afford a fancy sound system. But they don't care enough to bother figuring out what to buy, figuring out how to connect it all together, going through the whole effort of making sure to use the right remote to get the sound working right, etc. They just want to press play on the one device when they feel like watching a movie, even if its not the best experience possible. I know a few couples who do own a nice sound system. One partner never bothers to turn on the receiver or use any of the extra devices, they'll just use the built-in apps on the TV and turn the TV speakers up instead of bothering to turn on the fancy sound system already plugged in and otherwise ready to go. Its just not worth it to them to figure it out, so they don't bother using it.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Mine's on my laptop with headphones. I don't even have a TV, let alone a fancy sound system setup (and have no clue what those numbers everyone's throwing around even refer to).
    - vel0city 4y ago
      And that's perfectly fine, don't get me wrong. If that gets you enjoyment from the media you watch, that's great. You definitely don't need a fancy theater room to be happy. And honestly if it's a nice laptop and a good pair of headphones you're probably ahead of a lot of people watching on a cheap TV with built in speakers. Once again, not that it truly matters.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      X.Y (e.g. 5.1) means X wide range speakers and Y subwoofers. You also sometimes see it like S/T.Y where S+T = X, and it refers to front/surround speakers. There are standard values and configurations, such as 2.0 (aka stereo) both at the front, 2.1, 3.1 adds a centre channel mostly for on-screen dialogue positioned close to screen, 5.1 (3/2.1) adds a second stereo pair behind you, 7.1 - adds an extra surround stereo pair between the others, etc.
- treve 4y ago
  In my case I have a great receiver, but only 2 speakers. To get surround I'll need to put speakers in places that get in the way and run cables in place where I don't want to see them.
- avereveard 4y ago
  Well for one I'm not going to run cables everywhere and the other solutions have their faults: wireless satellite lag sound, and still need a power cable; battery operated satellites require constant maintenance.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Yea, unfortunately, my old 5.1 surround system of my bachelor days fails the “wife test.” Currently, to get all the channels the sound mixers give you, you need 6 ugly black boxes with speakers in them spread around your living room and another big black box receiver. And all the speaker wire everywhere. Yuck! Even if you hide the wires in the wall and use ceiling mounted speakers it’s still intrusive and ugly.
- adrianN 4y ago
  I watch movies for the story. 480p and my laptop speakers are enough for that. I enjoyed movies just the same when they were 700mb DivX with 128kps mp3 sound.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Yep, same here. Most of the movies which depend on "immersion" are just horrible. It doesn't matter if the dinosaur in "Jurrasic World Dominion" sounds realistic if I already want to quit the movie after seeing the first 10 minutes.
  - elteto 4y ago
    It’s an audiovisual art, it’s way more than just the story. Have you seen Barry Lyndon in a 4K OLED TV? You should.
- numpad0 4y ago
  I think our auditory system just isn't great. Compressed formats with bitrate of 320kbps is borderline indistinguishable from raw formats in audio, while it will be borderline unbearable in video.
  - mgdlbp 4y ago
    That's a really insightful way of putting it. My first reaction was, 'well, duh...', but then I realized that I'd taken for granted the fact that digital video of (arbitrarily defined) adequate quality must have a much higher information rate than audio of the same. But surely there are animals for which the opposite is true!
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  > and easy to setup. We all know this isn’t gonna be true. Just another thing to faff about with that will stop working and have to be reset. Even the effort of finding how to place it around my furniture doesn’t seem worth the effort to hear sound from different directions.
- paganel 4y ago
  > What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap and easy to setup. It takes up space that some of us honestly don't have, especially people living in city apartments (like I do). And I used to have a separate sound system at a past place, some many years ago, I don't think I'd be able to set it up again, it felt like black magic to set it up back then, it will surely feel the same (and more) now.
- michaelt 4y ago
  Speaking as someone with a 5.1 system they haven't set up: Getting the rear speakers' cables installed into your walls is expensive, and requires you own your home. Getting a room large enough you can get several guests between the speakers without some of them ending up much closer to the speakers than others is even moreso.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  It's a pain though, you have to take the time to setup the extra speakers, cable them and etc and have the space to do this, and of course the extra expense. Yes, it's cheap to some software developer on HN, but if you are on an average income it's harder to justify.
Freak_NL 4y ago
That pretty much sums it up. I wouldn't even be surprised if the percentage of households with anything over 2.0 has dropped in the past two decades. Of those people with an external receiver, a significant percentage will deliberately have a stereo setup, often used for listening to music. Good speakers, but no surround sound.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  I used to watch movies on an absurdly excessive 3000-watt sound system, equipped with dual 18" subwoofers... but I never bothered to get a surround decoder.
wazoox 4y ago
And among those with a 5.1 setup, most have the speakers placed haphazardly around the room and not at all as required for a correct rendering.

c0nsumer 4y ago

I'm with you. After having a nice 5.1 system 20 years ago, and a space set up for it, I now have fallen back to nice 2.0 or 2.1 systems. Decent amp with a DAC to some quality speakers and a sub and poof: really great audio in a simple system that doesn't require running wires everywhere. With the advent of cheap, decent, small single-channel amps it's really easy to do something like Apple TV -> HDMI -> TV -> TOSLINK -> Amp -> Speakers and be done with it. (I know I could go Apple TV right to the Amp, but passing it through the TV mitigates image-audio delay.)