I've been fooling around with multichannel audio for a a good number of years.
What I settled on is:
For music-
Two channel
CDP or MacBook, DAC, integrated tube amp, speakers set with slight ~4/6 degrees of toe in, plus sub from the integrated's sub out
Multi-channel music-
Same CDP or MacBook, into DAC, into McCormack MAP-1 that either inputs 5.1 analogue or 2 channel analog and via an analog circuit converts 2 channel into 4.1 or 5.1 or 6 channel, left and right front signals into tube integrated, left and right rear signal into 50wpc Llano mono-blocks, into speakers with same ~4/6 degrees of toe in, plus sub a above
Multi-channel movies-
Just like multichannel music except I often will run 5.1 analog inputs keeping the McCormack set to "none" regarding the center channel. This allows me to use the .1 LFE channel just like the movie mixing guy intended. And for whatever reason a lot more toe in(maybe ~25/27 degrees) seems to help with move soundtracks. I think the issue is I listen to music by myself 95% of the time and a smaller sweet spot is fine. When spinning movies sometimes my entire family is in the room - so the greater toe in likely yielding a much larger semi-sweet spot.
I've experimented with center channel speakers. My conclusion is that using a CC, in my rig in my room to my ears, is slightly better for movies and way worse, literally distracting, for music. So I do not use one.