It’s called Dolby Atmos for home...5.1 with height channels. Blue ray has a 5.1 surround modes for classical music. Berlin philharmonic hss a 5.1 surround concert streaming service. TThere are sacd’s still being made with Sony still supporting the format via hdmi...up to 5.1. Some companies are doing 5.1 with dolby atmos channels on hybrid cds(regulaar two channel cd layer and a sacd layer) or on blue ray discs. Prime Music at Amazon has many songs converted to 5.1 with Dolby atmos or Sony 360 surrounnd.
Quad isn’t dead...there are plenty of multichannel digital recordings out. You can get multichannel digital files download for sale on line. Sony 4k players will decode most of them. Newer Home theater receivers have USB ports to decode files directly...many now will do multichannel decoding.
Many old Quad discs were remastered into two channel compact discs with the matrix info still on them. Many folks have the old decoders that they put the stereo signal from the quad encoded cds through with excellent results. Because the sound source is digital, there is no wavering of the quad surround image...the adjustments stay where you want them...no constan fiddling like you did in the record era when the front back and left righ images tended to collapse due to uneven pick up by the record needle.
Some old quad sources have been remastered into 4.0 and 5.0 cd discs. Newer receivers allow you to channel all the bass thru the subwoofer for a real 4.1 and 5.1 experience.
Many early RCA tapes recorded in 3 channel tape tracks have been remastered into 3 channel sacd’s...with no back channels so one can here what the early performances sounded like...some of them are quite stunning ...like the earl wild piano.Arthur fiedler gershwin RCA recordings from 1954-58. Early Stereo from 3 track recorders...sound like they were made yesterday. I play them in a Dolby Prologic mode with height and back channel info synthesized with the front three channels sounding like they came right from the tape recorder ...de-equalized from record to what was recorded on the tape....some hiss but very negligible.
Lots of options out there. The beatles had one of their albums recently released in 5.1 surround with an Atmos sound track...Some of the singles are on Amazon prime in Dolby Atmos...quite stunning. Queen Bohemian Rhapsody can be heard in Dolby Atmos.
Wow, that is fantastic knowledge. I had a clue about most of it but didn’t know they had a dedicated protocol of Quad channels. I think it should be default and two channel as optional.
Check this out... Back in the day we used to “cross” our left and right channels from each other front to rear so it made an “X” output of the highs and lows. Especially in a car it added a “presence” that was a whole new ballgame and audio experience. All you had to do was swap left for right on either the front or rear channels.
Pretty cool sound and simple to do. Classical was off the charts with this arrangement of output. :)