I can't get enough of multi-channel, I admit my bias freely. I certainly understand why someone would prefer an audience perspective to capture the feel of being in the concert hall, but can't directional microphones be used to capture incoming sound from mutliple directions from the same seat? I don't see why you can't pick a listening position when we're talking about Blu-Ray. The capacity is certainly there to render multiple surround mixes or a high def stereo experience.
Circus Maximus was intended for multi-channel and there's no other way to hear it that does it justice. Ditto with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It was composed for Quadraphonic but was only released in Stereo in the US. Fortunately a mutli-channel SACD was released and it's stunning. You haven't heard DSotM until you've heard it in multichannel.
Stereo was created with the notion that we hear in stereo so audio is better reproduced in stereo, but stereo falls short because we really hear in 3D.
All that having been said, I listened to an SACD on a pair of Revel speakers a couple weeks ago at Madrona Digital in Bellevue and I was blown away. I thought it was multi-channel because those speakers have such amazing prescence, but I was assured it was just those two speakers. I dream of 8 of those playing a blu-ray audio disk.
OK, really going to diverge from the thread here... Have any of you heard of
Zaireeka by the Flamming Lips? It's 4 CDs that you play on 4 different sound systems at once. It's a must have for any multichannel audio enthusiest.