What did you add to your 2 channel system to do HT?

I'm watching Land of Bad on Netflix.  Lots of explosions.  Looks like a good movie. 👍

OK.  It's an excellent movie.  👍👍

I’m coming at it from my perspective.  I have a dedicated listening room for my 2 channel gear and 2 HT systems elsewhere in the home.  One of these is in the living room and we pretty much use for video only , although I do have an Oppo  203 and a CA CXN 2 channel streamer there.  The streamer mainly plays Internet Radio as background music while we eat.  In the basement my second HT system is split between video and audio.  Both HT systems are 5.1 with identical Anthem AVR.

  I don’t need a 2 channel pass through, therefore.  I like the Anthem AVR, obviously, but for me it’s probably overkill in the Living Room.  A competent Yamaha or Denon at half the price would be fine there, and one of the expensive processors would surely be waisted 

What a coincidence this thread exists as I just added in HT gear to my 2 channel room. I was going to build a custom cabinet and rig the living room for a mini HT set-up but my wife was not totally down with that. So I begrudgingly came up with a plan to add the HT gear to my fully tuned 2 channel set-up without buggering up any of the 2 channel sound.

I had all this gear in boxes and crates for years now that I needed to either use or get rid of: Wilson Watch center, Anthem 720, Oppo 4k player, Rythmik F12G, and 1000 movies.

I ordered a custom Audio Art 25 foot speaker cable for the Watch and built a shelf over the amp between the speakers to provide the proper angle. I had room on the rack for the Anthem and Oppo and I had left pull ropes in the floor joists to pull cabling across the room for sub and surrounds. I picked up a brand new set of Monitor dipole surrounds as that is all the space I could afford. And I just received a new SVS PB1000 Pro last week to give me dual subs. I'm running the Anthem via Bypass through the ARC Ref 5SE and using the Anthem for just the center and surrounds. I'm not sure I will ever go past 5.2 to my last set-up which was 7.2.4 in Kentucky.

I was hoping for and it did result in fantastic sound. Probably the best I ever had for a HT set-up. Even better than the 8 seat theater I had years ago. It seems that dropping in the HT gear on top of a well-tuned 2 channel was a winning formula.

I didn't want to blow the look of the room, so I did my best to hide the 75 inch LG OLED behind the front absorbers and use a lift to raise it up for movies. I moved 2 wall panels to the floor on wheeled supports so for those 2 I just slide them right and left to unblock the lower corners of the tv. Now I am just stuck with a 24 inch wide by 6 inch high piece of the tv screen visible when in stealth 2 channel mode.

I'm very happy with this now but the one unresolved issue is seating. I have to open this up to others to sit in for moving watching and adding 2 more chairs outboard is an option or getting a sofa and losing arms while in the sweet spot is not so cool. Plus, normal reclining couches don't recline the center seat unless you go real wide and that overwhelms the feel of the room. I have not updated any photos on my Tennessee System page, but you can see I don't have copious amounts of space for fat sofas. Still working that one.

Friggin' sounds awesome though.

@bugredmachine You had some nice stuff sitting in boxes.  It's great that you're able to use it!  :)