confused and don't know what to do

Most of these threads are full of so much waste of time I hardly ever come back for a second look. But just now I did and this one from audiotroy shouldn't just slide by:

Excuse us Millercarbon, please list your experience in setting up a Home Theater, all you do is denegrate those people who enjoy the benefits of both.

Right. I started out like everyone else fed the HT mantra looking for the full monty surround setup. This is all written up multiple times before btw. Spent at least a year, maybe two, going around to all the high end stores along the I5 corridor from north of Seattle to Portland. Started off listening to everything they had in Home Theater. AVRs initially, then separates.
My background before starting this was 20 years listening to a mid-1970's Kenwood integrated with JBL speakers and a Technics turntable, Pioneer RTR and Magnavox CDB650 CDP. That's the quality level I was used to and that's what kept me moving up the HT food chain. Because nothing HT was sounding even that good.
Along the way I would be in these stores and listen to their stereo gear. This was always and without exception night and day better than anything HT.
But I was really determined to have my surround theater experience. I had two pair of Talon Khorus for full range surrounds. I had done every single thing they tell you to do for home theater. All the calibration, speaker setup, everything. Hello! Full range Talons! Can you say over the top???!?
Every once in a while I thought there was something might be worth having. All the HT gear I brought home was crap. Finally one time I got what was at the time heralded to be the best surround processor around. Sorry, forget the model. Does not matter. It was such crap it too wasn't as good as the Kenwood. Played it for my wife. She couldn't believe it either.
HT exists because no one ever bothers to do these direct head to head comparisons. I actually did all this stuff. THAT is my experience.
Look at my system. Try and tell me I don't know what I'm doing. Or what I'm talking about. Go ahead. Try.
Denigrate? No. Again, look at my system! Look at it! DYODD! Its a dual use system! That great big gray thing on the wall? That's a Stewart Filmscreen Grayhawk screen. Again, try and tell me I don't know home theater!
Time and time again people come here looking for sound advice. Time and time again they run into people like audiotroy pushing what they have to sell. Talking their own book. That's the worst you could say of me. Talking my own book.
But at least I went to the trouble to do the work and make the comparisons, and have zero, zip, zilch, nada, NOTHING to gain financially.
Can you say the same, audiotroy? You are out to make a buck. So why should anyone care a whit what you have to say? And being in a supposedly higher position- professional, after all- to denigrate me? To call me out? You have some nerve. I'll give you that.

@millercarbon,
Your system looks fantastic and I couldn't agree with you more. There are a few dealers in this forum that are truly helpful and not constantly trying to promote products they sell. Unfortunately there is one dealer here that uses Audiogon's forum daily as a sales platform.

This retort is both to Millercarbon and Rbach.

First Millercarbon, you do have a nice two channel setup, however adding a screen to a two channel system does not make it into a Home Theater.

No center channel and no rears and no surround sound processor means you have stereo TV which can sound great but this kind of setup wiill not offer the level of involvement for video sources that you can get by having the additional components.

Your expreriences with combining "Home theater stores" and expecting to get real music out of a conventional home theater gear of course is not going to come anywhere near the level of quality that you will get out of a real music system, most "Home Theater stores" are run by people without training into design of Home Theaters nor have experience  with High end two channel music systems. Also many Home Theater stores use fiberglass acoustical panels which can make the room over damped or worse have no real acoustical treatment at all.

If your room is overdamped or underdamped neither will sound good.

Miller you seem to disadain the concept of Home Theater and seem to feel that the extra speakers are a waste. On contrare the center channel anchors the dialog and the real channels help create the expansive feeling of space which is why there are rear speakers in the first place.

If you also look at our posts we suggested that the OP look at a high end intergrated amplifier for the important job of providing the best possible wo channel sound and use a surorund sound receiver to power the rears and the center channel this is the same kind of setup you are also using except you have tube monoblocks and a preamp instead of an intergrated amplifier.

Your level of experience can not be compared with ours we builds both real Movie Theaters and we design state of the art music systems and in 30 years of professional audio experience the amount of gear we have sold, and tested and how many customers we have worked with is in the thousands.

As per the line that there are no such things as great Surround sound receviers the Audio Control and Arcam lines sound really quite good.

There are some also pretty amazing sound surround sound processor/preamps the Theta line, Audio Control, and the new NAD M17 MK 2 actually sound quite fantastic. The new Hegel C55 is a true music amplifier that just happens to provide three additional channels over a comparable two channel Hegel amplifer.

We have built theaters for major celebrities and have been trained by Toni Grimani Keith Yates and Russ Herschelman.

We have four soon to be five sound rooms which include both pure music rooms and our two channel business partners include some of the finest music gear in the world including: Naim, T+A, Electrocompaniet, Krell, Unison Research, Micromega, Zesto, Hegel, Coda, Lumin, Bricasti, Anthem, Audio Control, KEF,Paradigm, Dali, ATC, Quad, Cabasse, Legacy, Alta audio and lots more.

Rbach we write on these forums not to necessarily sell anything, we have helped clients from all over the country, and even in other countries all without selling them anything.

Why don’t you contact Fast who wanted to sell his brand new Kef Ref 5 because he couldn’t get them to sound right in his room, we started talking on the boards and he reached out to us and we advised him on what he needed to do to make the system sound great.

We sent him a power conditioner, power cables, interconnects, footers, room tuning accessories, a new dac, and music server and after working on his system for a few days which included repostioning his KEF Reference Fives, the system sounded fantastic.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

RAW33,

As previously mentioned audition as many gear as you can and come to your own conclusion. I am sure you noticed that everyone here claims they have the best system and this is simply because they picked out what they thought was right for them. As I mentioned pick out the speakers that call out to you sonically,
etc. and do your best to match the rest to balance out the speakers to your taste.

Everyone here has the best intention to help, but all these recommendations will become overwhelming. Bottom line is you will end up picking your own gear in the end by auditioning, reading reputable reviews, etc. Don’t get me wrong there are very good topics and information provided here that you will benefit from for your setup, but in the end it is your call. I already mentioned this previously, read on tweeter material like berillium, titanium, etc., since these will influence the speaker sound to a large degree.
Anyway, this research was fun for me because I learned a lot and I was turned on to great music along the way.

Yes, it is overwhelming but I feel that I have definitely benefited from much of the knowledge and helpful advice I gained from reading many of these posts. I really do appreciate everyones opinion.  The intricacies and the details that go in to a sound system are fascinating and I have just barely scraped the surface.  I am trying to gain understanding  but see that will take me awhile and much experimenting and experiencing. I look forward to an interesting journey. As you say, the system has to be right for me and I am sure I will make mistakes in my choices from which I will learn. I am just hoping those mistakes aren't too expensive. LOL!