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Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe  One big problem is that there are no rear speakers in most US theaters. The have speakers behind the screen, on the walls but nothing directly behind the viewers. The ear is a marvelous organ and can hear lots of things including directionality of the sound source but to be enveloped you have to be "surrounded by sound" and not just in front of you and on your sides. I have been in the woods and sound come at you from all directions including high above your head and at foot level. They come from everywhere all at once. The brain is not fooled by some speakers along a wall and some in front as much as the proponents of 5.1 or 7.1 surround would like you to believe. Also a lot of theaters in the US do not have the time or the money to check their audio playback systems as often as they should and sometimes speakers or amplifiers fail or their settings get changed and what sounded good when they were installed no longer sound that good.
When I worked at the local college we had an "environmental" sound artist come in and set up a field of speakers in a room and you could walk into the setup and feel like you were at the ocean, in a rain forest or in downtown Manhattan depending on what surround source they were using. There were about 40 speakers in a hemispherical shape and it was pretty amazing. It took two days to set up the exhibit and the lines were endless to experience the total envelopment in the sound field. I believe he did all of his recording with the sound field microphone from Soundfield or Holophone SoundField: Benefits of a SoundField System Holophone | H2-PRO 7.1 Surround Sound Recording | H2-PRO | B&H |
Hey Tom, yes I've experienced similar sonic landscapes in art installations. That's what I want in a theater as well.
And here in Europe, the big multiplex cinemas have almost always speakers in the back. As I said, the 'problem' is not on the reproduction side.