I have 2 Multichannel music systems - Toshiba SD9200 DVD Audio and Philips SACD 1000. (No universal yet) For kicking back, I prefer 2 channel, in particular, a SET tube amp sourced by either an Ah Njoe Tjoeb tube output CDP or Scott tube FM tuner. a bit of 12 year old Laphroaig and water ... 2 channel.
I gave up smoking so I don't spend much time with my 2 channel garage system, but the Kenwood KA9100 integrated amp (silver faced beautiful looking, beautiful sounding), Dahlquist DQM 905 speakers, veoldyne subwoofer, Sony CA9ES 5 disc CDP is a great sounding 2 channel system.
I've listened to music on my 5.1 and 7.1 systems. They just seem too much ... unfocused, keep wanting to make it louder in order to get it to sound better. Ultimately, I'm not impressed with multichannel for music. For movies and blowing things up, there's nothing like multichannel.
JMO
