Whats in your second system?

Great thread! It's good to know I'm not the only insane audiophile out there. All of my systems are 'second systems' since I never had the wherewithal at any one time to go whole-hog on a main system. But I don't feel like I've missed out on anything, because it's just plain fun to experiment with different pieces until you come up with that right combo that just seems to click. Props to Audiogon, because that's where the majority of my equipment has come from.....it's great to belong to a community where the level of trust in dealing with others gives you the
opportunity to get nice gear at a fraction of the 'new' cost.
Pieces from Adcom, Parasound, ATI, McCormack, PS Audio, Sansui, Musical Fidelity, Denon, Harman-Kardon, Thorens, Sony, Dynaudio, PSB, Paradigm, Polk, Monitor Audio, Sunfire, Definitive Technology, and M&K comprise several different systems throughout my house that keep me boppin' right along.

@discnik 

I thought being an "audiophile" was just another word for temporary insanity.....lol.

Glad you are enjoying the ride!

It’s very enjoyable reading all these descriptions.. It’s interesting to hear of people with more than one dedicated listening room!

I suppose I could say I have secondary and tertiary systems..

The secondary system resides in the kids’ playroom. It consists of a sansui 5900 integrated amp mated to a pair of ads L470/2 speakers. Source is simply a Bluetooth receiver so the kids can play what they want without ripping cords off components. The speaker cabs are in rough shape (can’t expect perfection for $20) but they function perfectly. Both speakers and amp were Craigslist acquisitions that I had to buy because we have almost no decent audio gear show up around here.. I do love the sound of the ads/sansui combo.

My tertiary system is the one I listen to the most and would make overly serious audiophiles cringe. We have an open plan living/dining/kitchen. Being the stay at home dad, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I did the following to get good sound:
-installed 4 BIC speakers in the ceiling/wall corners. These are very small bookshelf speakers, maybe twice the size of Bose cubes, but they are heavy and sound great down to 100hz
-ran cabling through the attic to the speakers and then down the inside of a wall, ending up under my kitchen sink.
-installed an in wall sub on the back of my kitchen island, and built a wooden box behind it since the cabinet space behind it was too big and the bass was junk
-bought a 150w Dayton Audio stereo amp to drive the small speakers and a 250w sub plate amp to drive the sub, both cheaply at parts express
-monoprice Bluetooth receiver with optical out into an inexpensive fiio DAC
-tripplite surge protector lets me turn the whole thing off or on with one switch.

All the electronics are under the kitchen sink, the only things visible are the subwoofer installed flush on the back of the island and the small, white speakers in the corners.

It sounds pretty damned great. The room has hardwood floors and many large windows, so there’s no way I’m getting audiophile sound no matter what I install, but the sound is clearer, more evenly dispersed and has better bass than any sonos or Bluetooth speaker system that I’ve heard.

But man, crawling around the attic to run those cables, ugh.

I doubt these count as "second systems" because I'd be using the same amps/source.  But though my main speakers are Thiels (3.7 and 2.7) I have a variety of speakers I also switch into the system:  MBL 121 monitors, Waveform Mach MC monitors, Hales T1 monitors, Spendor 3/5s, Thiel 02s.

Yeah, I got the sickness.

My DREAM second system would use Quad ESL 57s.  And in fact I was actually offered a pair free.  But try as I might, I couldn't come up with a place to set them up that would work. 

My God man! Free quads?! I would have take them just to play with