Comparable to the Denon 4311 I listed above. However, if I had ~$1500 as a budget, I'd go the Emotiva XPA-5 ($769) with a Marantz 6005 AVR ($589) as a pre-pro.OMARBOF said:
The main reason why I'm recommending this approach. Marantz has, in my opinion, a better "musicality" sound to it for music listening while the clean power of the Emotiva XPA-5 will surpass anything Denon or Yamaha (or any other AVR) under $2000+ will provide. In fact, the NAD T775 will run you between $2500-$3000 to achieve what the Marantz-Emotiva combo will for under $1500...OMARBOF said:
Absolutely. Don't forget that the Marantz 6005 is also a quite capable 7.1 receiver. You could, instead of the XPA-5, simply get the XPA-2 to drive the front 2 towers and power the rest of your speakers using the Marantz 6005. Or, as many do, get an XPA-3 to drive the towers and center channel and use the Marantz to drive all the surrounds as they usually do not require much power. JBOMARBOF said:
When watching a movie, 70% of the sound is vocals coming out of your center channel, 20-25% is music from the left and right fronts leaving less than 5-10% for "ambient sounds and effects" for your surround speakers. Also, surround speakers tend to be be smaller for exactly that reason. Also, don't forget that your subwoofer is taking a huge load off small speakers by playing the more demanding bass notes. In 2 channel music listening, 100% of the sound is to your left and right fronts. All this to say, your front 3 speakers tend to need the most power which is why many use separate amps to drive those channels. You will not hear a sonic difference because you are using seperate amps for the fronts and the AVR's amps for the surrounds*. * - if you are listening to movies or music in 7channel mode (i.e. all speakers getting the same signal strength), you may hear the difference in power but that's going to be more a function of your speaker size than the amount of power they are receiving.OMARBOF said:
