The birth of modern surround sound — what would become 5.1 — can be traced back to Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola’s hallucinatory war epic that redefined cinematic sound. At a time when most films were mixed in simple stereo, Apocalypse Now exploded into theaters with a multi-channel sound system that surrounded audiences with chaos, texture, and psychological depth. Led by sound designer Walter Murch, the film’s audio team built an entirely new way of experiencing cinema — one wher