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First, for those not familiar:

Occam’s razor - n.   A rule in science and philosophy stating that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. This rule is interpreted to mean that the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known. Also called law of parsimony.

also - when two competing hypotheses explain the data equally well, choose the simpler. Named for Eng. philosopher William of Ockham (c.1285-c.1349).

- from Dictionary.com

like the straight razor, the concept of Occam’s Razor gets to the point - the best way of doing things is usually the simplest

Knowing that Occam’s razor works in science in mathematics, I thought it might be good to apply it to home audio reproduction.  The trend these days is to go the other direction, and I feel that is wrong.

The very best example is well mic’ed, well recorded productions of an orchestra. When reproduced on very good quality equipment, there is absolutely no need for a center channel, for rear speakers, or for any manipulation of the signal, such as surround processors or time-delay devices. When looking at the signal from a scientific standpoint, anything changed or modified from the original signal is distortion. Now we look at components like amplifiers, and look for the lowest possible total harmonic distortion, the lowest intermodulation distortion, and the lowest transient intermodulation distortion. We would not think of accepting an amplifier with 5% TIM distortion, yet we introduce changes in sound of 10% and above routinely, not realizing this is also distortion.

That was the example of best circumstances. Not that it happens that often. What often happens is that the source material is not recorded well, both in terms of quality of equipment used, such as inferior microphones, but also the placement of the microphones does not allow correct soundstaging. This is precisely what multichannel sound was made for.

so many microphones, so many types, how does one choose? It’s not only a problem for the average human, professionals often argue about choice of, and placement.

Microphones not correctly placed? Putting more of them in the setup will pick up more of the total performance, hopefully gaining more realistic sound. This is how the theory goes.

On the other end of things, where we are trying to reproduce the sound, there are reasons why we don’t want omniphonic sound.  Each speaker we introduce into the mix means more hardware that must be purchased, and, for the same amount of cash we have lesser quality. Lower quality speakers and lower power amplifiers do not yield the same quality sound. As a matter of fact, given all else being equal, it would be preferable to have 5 full-range channels, as opposed to  the current 5.1 arrangement, where bass is only reproduced in one place, with a mix that many times produces strange aural clues.

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