ABSTRACT
One of the greatest problems facing designers of surround sound rooms is the lack of a clear consensus amongst the music business as a whole as to exactly what they want from surround sound. Perhaps, therefore, it would be expedient to first look at the systems that have become virtual standards in the multimedia use of surround, and then move on to the implications for music only surround. Historically, cinema led the way in the serious use of surround sound, because Walt Disney’s animation film ‘Fantasia’ featured multi-channel surround audio, 30 years before the record companies made their big push with quadrophonics in the early 1970s.
