And just to be clear, I mention them sometimes simply in terms of how they hit my own particular pleasure buttons, which is not to say they are any better than some other ASR member's loudspeakers.
I have two different systems. The amplification and sources are down the hall in a separate room for both the two channel and home theater. The cabling for all that runs through walls/floors in to my listening/home theater room.
In the home theater/listening room, I have the two separate speakers systems: My two channel speakers (Josephs) which are pulled well out towards the listening sofa, and my surround system for my home theater. The HT speakers have the usual set up of the L/C/R speakers flanking the projection screen, and there are side and back channels for surround. I also listen to music on that system.
Occasionally I hook up the Joseph speakers to my home theater system (AVR), and sometimes I hook up my L/C home theater speakers to my 2 channel amps (tube) and sources. Sometimes I mix and match. Though mostly I listen to the systems separately.
Yes I'm of that mindset. I come from an audiophile-first mindset regarding loudspeakers - that any speaker I have in my room first must be very engaging with music on their own, so I'm a "music first" approach vs a "brute force what speakers do I need for home theater?" approach.
Along those lines I chose Hales Transcendance speakers for my L/C/R. They are a defunkt company now, but I owned their larger tower speakers and I'd just swoon at their timbral realism and smoothness, so I bought their top of the line stand mounts for my music listeninig for quite a while before they did HT duty, and then I got their big center channel to match. They match beautifully. And going with speakers that passed my most stringent "does it sound human/right" test with music paid off perfectly. For me there is a human "unmechanical" quality and timbral color to movie soundtracks on the system that I don't often hear elsewhere (totally subjective/my taste).
I sometimes throw in photos because I think some enjoy photos of people's gear. Since my own Hales L/C/R speakers are covered in black velvet I'm grabbing these from the net. The T1 speakers:
The Transcendeance Cinema Center is a BIG mother, very powerful yet delicate sounding, and I don't find the need for a subwoofer with this system (again, not mine, shots grabbed elsewhere):
All that said, I wouldn't project my mindset on to others. I don't think you need to think "two channels" first. You can be just as sucessful carefully purchasing a full
home theater speaker set up, or even a system just for surround music listening.
That's entirely up to someone's own taste and goals.
I think for many it wouldn't be worth it to have two separate systems. Much easier with just one, and with a good AVR you should be able to do room correction to acheive excellent sound in stereo when you want it. (Mine sounds excellent in stereo too).
I think a lot of audiophiles believe that a home theater reciever and speakers can't compete with an "audiophile 2 channel system" and I think that's mostly nonsense. I think there are some practical advantages to 2 channel in some ways, in terms of speaker placement, but nothing that bars excellent performance using an AVR.
The only reason I have two systems is because I just have my own picky tastes. I like using tube amps - that wouldn't work for home theater. I like a sort of "separate music system" which does vinyl as well. And I want the most optimized two channel listening eperience I could manage in my room, and for me that means tower speakers that are not stuck in the corners for home theater duty as well, but which instead I can put out further in the room and dial them in separately for music.
I go back and forth and enjoy each system.
So, that's not a prescription for others; just a description of how I went about it for my own goals.
Cheers.
