Sony's New SACD Player

In my opinion, two is best in most cases.

9 channels is crazy, think of the amps, cables , yikes !
Not to mention you would need a HUGE room to even think about it. But as to the Firewire , unless you are having massive bass mangement issues, which I personally do not, IMO its crazy to have to upgrade 2 components, especially if your already happy with your front end and DAC. The Firewire connection would have to provide a "significant" sonic advantage for me to consider it. I could be wrong, but my gut reaction says it wont.

Exactly! Look at the nature, two eyes to identify the depth of field, and two ears to identify the delay in sound, so that you get the sense of direction of source. All you need is two good sources of sound and you get it all, anything else is excess baggage.

Movies, ofcourse is a different ball-game. There's so much chaos and confusion, spectator is bewildered anyway. And if that is not enough, you have a guy on your screen and there's an explosion BEHIND him. Instead of you hearing the explosion with a delay (which creates the illusion that the explosion takes place far away from the foreground of your screen), you hear it from your BEHIND! So much for that crap.......