Although this thread is almost 2 years old, seems to be ideal to ask my questions. Please keep in mind I am only talking about home environment.
I am evaluating which way to go: 2 as good as I am willing to pay for tower full range speakers, or many inexpensive ones (ie multi-channel). In my search I ended up in the Definitive Audio store and after short chat with person there he asked me if I have a minute and took me to their audio room. I did not know at that time that they are serving high end audio customers, when I saw equipment that I have never seen before. I was floored by clarity and quality of sound. Granted, those 2 speakers with 2 mono amplifiers and cabling cost over $200K (I think it was this one
http://wilsonaudio.com/products/alexx/alexx). Btw, this company has organ recording too (
http://wilsonaudio.com/wilson-audiophil ... 01-concert).
People who spend this kind of money on audio seem to listen to classical music. So when you listen to symphony orchestra I would expect the same issues that are described in that article to appear as if you listen organ music. Orchestras and organs are older then electricity and speakers, so the only way to increase volume was to add more instruments or stops to play basically the same thing. When you look at positioning, whole orchestra in performance hall is only on the one side, and also all organ pipes (except for some largest ones) are on the single place.
So considering this and all that was said in this thread (like hardness to properly position many speakers, dealing with many more components, compatibility, ...) wouldn't be easier and better for all but the most demanding Hautpwerk users to simply go with single as good as possible speaker pair route?