Bob Draper writes:

>Hence, if surround sound is carrying additional information for the rear
>channels on the same length of CD than it must be doing so at the expense
>of sound quality in the front channels.  You don't get something for
>nothing.

You do if the center and two rear "channels" are not actually carried on
the CD but are synthesized by the electronics by mixing, equalizing and
delaying.  For a typical orchestral recording the rear channel information
is going to be hall reflections anyway.  You can argue that this
"additional" information is not accurately representative of the concert
hall experience, but that's just as true of the two front channels alone.

len.