Why would you prefer yamaha over the other 2? Price? internal DAC? quality of the circuits? more features for the buck?
If you read the post to which I was referring, the issue of reliability was raised. With that (i.e., reliability) in mind, I would go with Yamaha. Judging from online complaints, no one makes a more reliable receiver than Yamaha. They also go for a reasonable price, with good feature sets.
As for DACs, you need not worry about them. Every decent brand uses fine DACs.
From a sound standpoint, no one is going to be able to hear the difference between comparably priced receivers from reputable brands, as long as they are set identically (which is something that people almost never do when they compare, which makes their comparisons totally useless).
But, again, there is nothing wrong with Marantz, and no one can reasonably call it a bad choice.
Just curious as i have not made up my mind on anything more than i want a "good" HT experience and Superb 2 channel music sound. Thats doesnt seem likely to happen from what i am reading in a sub $1000 dollar AVR.
You are reading the wrong things. Modern AVRs from reputable companies sound great, as long as they are operated within their design limits (e.g., hooking up 1 ohm
Apogee Scintillas and cranking up the volume would not be using them within their design limits).
So my thinking was to find clean reputable circuitry with analog preouts for clean amps downstream of the avr. (i cant decide though if passing the signal through the avr will taint/contaminate/alter it). My thinking is an AVR gives me home theater now and music that i can (hopefully) clean up a bit later down the road.
Most likely, adding an external amplifier will be totally unnecessary. It is
ONLY if your speakers are difficult to drive that you should do that. Otherwise, it is a waste of money. And it also is more likely to degrade the sound, as one could mismatch the levels and worsen the noise floor with an added amp. But if one has difficult to drive speakers, then one should get an external amp for them.
The material that i have read about Audssey makes me think calibration of a 5 speaker system will be just short of automated using it. I am not planning on running a sub. I will use 2 massive towers each with 12 inch subs on an internal crossover, a center channel and 2 rear channels. The quality of sound and particularly music is what will matter most to me. That seems to be fairly straight forward to set up for a 2 channel system and that is how I plan on listening to music.
For less than 600$ with the possibility of being able to "throw" more money at the system later, how would you approach it? Which AVR or separates would you chose?
Every good brand of AVR has some sort of automatic setup. Typically, they can be trusted for things like delays and levels, but are not generally to be trusted for crossover settings. As far as I know, no one has ever done a proper comparison to determine which company makes the best automatic setup, but a lack of actual facts does not prevent many people from forming strong opinions anyway.
For $600, I would totally forget about separates, as you cannot get much for that price. I would look for closeout sales on recently discontinued receivers to get the best I could for my money. I would look at Yamaha first, but I would also keep in mind Denon, Marantz, and Pioneer at that price point.
Again, your Marantz choice is fine. If it has all the features you require, it is a fine choice.
