We take turns meeting at each member’s home, allowing each member to host and present/share their music, food, wine/drinks and good company. Most of the members have various consumer-level listening stations: AV receivers, Bluetooth soundbars and even the TV!
@audiodidact , this KIND OF (remember, I did type "kind of") reminds me of when I was in the Air Force in the late '70s through early '80s. Most of us had rack systems and some had better systems than that, and when I lived in the barracks (which I assume was a lot like a college dorm) a bunch of us would get together in someone's room and we'd play LPs and 8 tracks and drink beer. Then in the early '80s my rack system and I moved off base to an apartment with a couple of other guys and people would come over and we'd drink beer and use cannabis products and whatever else might be around at the time and play LPs and 8 tracks or one of the local FM rock stations and turn on the TV with the sound down. A friend of mine had what we considered at the time a pretty good system--Bose 901s and some huge Japanese watts in front of them. He had a great LP collection, and I remember an outdoor keg party he had at the little house where he was living and I got to play DJ and it was a great party and I had a blast picking the tunes and spinning the LPs..
In retrospect, I am positive the sound was not very good back then, but I also remember having a lot of pure fun with the MUSIC. Way more pure fun than I have now with far superior gear and SQ. But that was a long time ago, long before I had ever heard of critical listening, and if I wasn't listening the way I am listening now-a-days, I probably wouldn't be listening to anything, except maybe the radio in my pickup when I was driving some place.
