Hello all. New guy here but not new to home audio and HT. I've been out of the game for many years as life has a way of rearranging priorities. If any of you used to frequent HTT and or HTF back in the day I am Brian S. I was one of the early guys building sonosubs back before SVS got going. I eventually moved on to Infinite Baffle subs which I absolutely love! I built my living room around my 5.1 HT system a few years ago including a dedicated media wall with two 15" subs in an infinite baffle. I also built all my speakers, well I made the cabinets anyway. (They are an Audax HT kit designed by Vance Dickanson with pre-built crosssovers by Madisound). As time goes on and things change I plan to invest more time once again in this hobby including building more speakers and subs. Also delving into dedicated two-channel audio.
With that said I am in need of some guidance. My Onkyo TX-NR809's HDMI board finally crapped out a couple of weeks ago. I had been toying with the idea of replacing it with something with Atmos before it died but now I don't have much choice as I don't want to invest several hundred dollars in repairing a 10 yr. old receiver. I had been using the Onk as a PRE/PRO all along. The internal amps were never used. Perhaps that's why it lasted as long as it did before the HDMI before died, IDK.
So I have been looking at the current crop of upper end receivers to once again use as a Pre/Pro and also potentially a couple of dedicated processors. The thing is I only have 7 channels of amplification.. Two ATI Amps, a 1505 and a 1502. I was bridging the 1502 to my center and using 4 of the 5 channels of the 1505 for L,R,LS and RS with one channel unused. If I go the separates route I will need to not only add more speakers but also more amplification which equals more $$$. Not that I'm not opposed to doing that it's just that I'm not sure if I really need to. I don't listen to HT at the levels I used to so my brain is telling me that I probably will be just fine using a receiver to power the Atmos speakers and continue using my ATI amps as I was.
What I'm looking at and trying to keep it under $2500ish list.
Receivers:
Denon AVR-X4700H
Denon AVR-X6700H
Marantz SR-7015
Yamaha RX-A3080
Pre/Pros:
Marantz AV7705
Yamaha CX-A5200
So here's the part where analysis paralysis comes in. I would like to purchase something that has good build quality and won't crap out like my past three Onkyos. I'm done with them. They were the shiz back in the day power wise but I'm out now. The new Denon and Marantz receivers have a great feature set based on what I've seen but I've also seen some reports of bugs in the recently released 2020 models which is to be expected I suppose but I don't want to be a Guinea pig for them. Now Yamaha on the other hand has a fantastic reputation for build quality and reliability. However they are lacking HDMI 2.1 and some other features such as Audyssey. Add to that after seeing the new design of the Yamaha 2020 line I don't think I'd consider them. It's a shame but they are not very visually pleasing to my eyes.
I'm hoping getting this out of my head and for you guys to sift through will perhaps yield some helpful ideas. So gentlemen and ladies, if there are nay here, what say you? What direction would you go?? BTW, if anyone is in the Tampa Bay area are there any meets happening?
