Poll: Is stereo on its way out?  by Steve Guttenberg October 13,
2012   Home audio was strictly a single-speaker pursuit from the
dawn of recorded sound through the late 1950s, when stereo
changed the way we listen to music. Multichannel home theater's
popularity peaked in the late 1990s, but starting with iPods and
sound-bar speakers, mono was back in style. More recently sales
of battery-powered, mono Bluetooth speakers started to take off.
While these lo-fi systems may contain stereo pairs of drivers,
the speakers are so small that stereo separation is nonexistent.
The better home theater sound-bar speakers can generate wide and
spacious imaging, but no 'bar can match the sound of stereo
speakers placed 6 or 7 feet apart.  I'm not sure why, but few
streaming speakers are available as stereo pairs. Why not? It
should be a simple matter for Bluetooth or AirPlay speakers to
recognize the presence of a second speaker, and send sound to
the right and left channel speakers. I guess most buyers don't
miss stereo,