The argument over desirable characteristics has also carried over into the areas of microphones and loudspeakers. In some ways one can consider this a related debate to that which often occurs in the art of stereo recording. These issues are far from solved although it appears that in the cinema there is a greater consensus, because the listening environment and coding methods are more highly standardised. The question of what is really practical or appropriate has not been settled either, although some will say that the buying public knows best. Most homes cannot accommodate sixteen speaker sound systems, nor is it acceptable yet to hand out three dimensional virtual reality headphones to rock concert patrons.
Different technologies evolve to suit different contexts.
In the last decade of the twentieth century there has been a growing interest in spatial sound arising from the development of new communications and media technologies. Many rental videotapes and television shows are now Dolby encoded for cinema style surround sound. New equipment and software is beginning to proliferate, claiming to deliver spatial sound. There is no commercially available system that successfully conveys the natural spatial hearing experience. Apart from Ambisonics, a close approach is made by binaural stereo and transaural stereo methods, both capable of delivering a quite natural sounding three dimensional effect when used with well recorded source material.