Oh dear James, more pre-conceived ideas not based on experience

If you were to add "for the same money" to the end of your sentence I'd agree with you, but a properly done multichannel system (after all, we're talking about listening to music here, not watching DVDs so "AV" is something of a misnomer) can sound as good as and in many ways, better, than any 2 channel system you care to setup.  Of course it will always cost more, quite a lot more, but it's perfectly possible.

Michael.