[1] In reference to his own work, Karlheinz Stockhausen made a distinction between these two forms, reserving the term "octophonic" for a cube configuration, as found in his Oktophonie and the electronic music for scene 2 and the Farewell of Mittwoch aus Licht, and using the expression "eight-channel sound" for the circular arrangement, as used in Sirius, Unsichtbare Chöre, or Hours 13 to 21 of the Klang cycle.
In order for such movement in space to be heard, it is necessary that rhythms be slow, and pitches change mainly in small steps or in glissandos.
[4] Some notable composers who have worked with octophonic spatialisation include Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jonathan Harvey, Gérard Pape, and Larry Austin.
The first known octophonic (that is, eight-channel) electronic music was John Cage's Williams Mix (1951–53) for eight separate simultaneously played back quarter-inch magnetic tapes.
[8] Octophonic sound (in the general sense of eight-channel playback) was stimulated primarily by "the equal coverage it provides to all listening angles" and also by the precedence of eight-channel (initially tape) sound and subsequent ease of playback.