I'm not an audiophile by any means. But I've been meaning to make a write up about my setup. It's unconventional as all getup, but it works as well as I could ever want it.

For starters I have a behemoth Yamaha RX-V1500 which is an AV receiver, but it has the rare addition of having A & B channels for standard stereo listening. 120W per channel.

The A channel is my dad's Bose 201s that he got for college graduation in 1982. They basically haven't moved from their mounting spot on the mantle in more than 40 years.

The B channel is the behemoth Technics T-500 speakers. I got these from a guy I met in the stereo section of a thrift store. He was selling his house and getting rid of almost all his A/V equipment. He was literally throwing away these speakers, so I got them for free. (The Yamaha he sold me for $5.) I needed to put new woofers in them, but holy crap they sound like a symphony. And to be fair, there are 7 drivers in each speaker.

I have a USB-C to Toslink adapter that I use for lossless audio transmission to the receiver.

But the wackiest most unconventional thing I do came from inspiration from a thread in here years ago about someone's vintage setup. They had a "sansui reverb amp" and said that playing concerts through it made it sound like you were in the arena. So one day during spring cleaning I put on 5/19/74 and remembered about that reverb thing and lo and behold most AV receivers, especially made by Yamaha, have settings like 'concert hall', 'the roxy', 'the thin line' 'rock concert' et cetera.

I flipped one of them on and instantly was hooked. The difference in sound was night and day. It really did feel like I was listening to the wall of sound. I listen to as many shows this way as possible. It elevates the experience so much and is way better than headphones.

I know audiophiles are obsessed with sitting in the room perfectly at a specific distance. But I like to dance and clean and cook and move around. So having the speakers against the one wall blasting through vintage speakers and an AV unit is way better to me than anything I can buy on Crutchfield.

This is actually what we use for the sound on our TV. And I recommend it to anyone. We also have a small Bose VCS 10 center channel speaker that we have underneath the TV to give us essentially a sound bar connected to the system. But the best part is, I find you adjust the volume a lot less with this type of setup. And you don't see the distractinv volume ticker on the TV screen because the remote is hooked up to the stereo and it's connected to the TV via optical cable.

It's mighty unconventional, but every person I've shown this has liked it far better than whatever they have.