Multichannel audio refers to the use of multiple sound sources to create a richer, or live music experience. As opposed to mono and stereo (two channel sound), multichannel audio has become popular with the advent of home theater and DVD systems in the 1990s.

Origins

The earlier quadraphonic (four speaker) systems were the original multichannel systems, but they never became widely popular.

Modern systems

With the advent of digital encoding and DVDs in the 1990s, multichannel audio became popular to recreate the special effects sounds experiences in movie theaters. Typically, systems have attempted to recreate the five point one (5.1) channels, which consist of:

• Front left speaker
• Front center speaker
• Front right speaker
• Rear left speaker
• Rear right speaker
• Low frequency effects (LFE), sent to the subwoofer

Systems such as Dolby Digital and DTS have provided the most popular solutions for multichannel audio.

In recent years, this has been expanded to 6.1 and 7.1 systems, which have added:

• Rear center speaker
• Left effects speaker
• Right effects speaker