Originally Posted by
justapax
............you only have two ears, so why do you need 5.1 speakers? For me, I want real audio quality............
5.1 was developed for cinema type viewing, where surround sound speakers can give a more "immersive" 3D experience and film sound engineers and sound mixers can produce a wide aural sound stage and effects. And also because viewers could not all sit in the best position to hear everything properly from just two loudspeakers.
They added a centre speaker to give clear vocal dialogue, and they added a sub-woofer to a) to add quality by producing the very deep low frequency sounds to add to the cinema experience, and b) to fill in the lower registers missing from the generally much smaller "satellite" surround speakers in people's living rooms.
You can get most of that from a high quality pair of loudspeakers and amplifier(s) or high quality headphones and a binaural,recording, but that's not practical or affordable for a family watching a film on the sofa in their living room.