Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Five point one means three front channels, two rear and a bass channel. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a music fact?

Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Surround sound adds channels behind the listener

Five point one means three front channels, two rear and a bass channel Film sound led the format, and music followed for concert recordings and games. Object based systems arrived later, placing individual sounds in three dimensions rather than fixed channels. Home setups rarely meet the specified layouts. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Britannica

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Movies & Television trivia

More facts like this

Dolby Digital brought 5.1 surround to cinemasBatman Returns carried the first six-channel digital film prints in 1992 Quadraphonic sound collapsed after a format warFour-channel records arrived with three incompatible ways of decoding them Records outsold compact discs againVinyl passed CD revenue in the late 2010s and kept climbing One side of an LP holds hundreds of metres of grooveThe spiral on a twelve inch record unrolls to roughly 460 metres Eight track cartridges rolled the tape in one loopThe end of the tape simply joined the start, so it played for ever Wax cylinders lost the first format warEdison backed cylinders while rivals pushed discs that could be stamped

Tags: surround, formats, cinema

Surround sound adds channels behind the listener: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Five point one means three front channels, two rear and a bass channel. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?: Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.