The real crux of the issue is that while we're all glad that Audio Fidelity got into the business of releasing Multichannel SACDs for about two years and produced some really wonderful releases, in many respects, they waited too long to get into the Multichannel SACD business.
Now no matter when they would have jumped in, they were always going to run into brick walls here and there put up by the artists and record labels. It's to be expected.
However, if they would have started the releases several years sooner, they could have beaten the other reissue labels to the table on several key titles that could have been big sellers if released as Multichannel SACDs.
Titles from the likes of Santana, The Doobie Brothers, Billy Joel, The Allman Brothers Band, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, Carly Simon, Miles Davis, and countless others. [That list encompasses 4.0 and 5.1 mixes]
So what it's come to is that Audio Fidelity have just run into too many brick walls to keep releasing Multichannel SACDs like they did over that two year period. The brick walls put up around certain titles by the artists and owning record labels is one thing, but then you also have other SACD reissue labels (like the surround-haters at MOFI) getting access to certain titles before AF could get ahold of them, and so what are they left with?
A lot of titles that would either be poor sellers for them (no matter how good the music and/or surround mix may be) or titles that have really terrible surround mixes, so much so that it would be a wasted effort to release them again in such a form.
I'm still really glad that Audio Fidelity released what they could, but let's face it. If they manage to get any other amazing Multichannel SACDs out the door, it really will be a miracle...