Interesting material here.
I have no preference either way. I do however find it interesting how adament some people are in insisting that seperates are better, albeit mostly with caveats. As FMW, and WmAx have stated previously, so long as the components are good enough to not impart any artificial noise to the output then it will make no difference which way you go. That said, the only real factors when considering a purchase are your intended results. If you are planing a straight 2 channel setup, and have speakers rated for higher wattage then it would make sense to follow the seperates route. On the other hand, if you are interested in a 7 channel system orientated towards a movie experience then a reciever would make far more sense. I don't know many people that can sit and watch a movie at the same volume that you might blast ZZ Top's La Grange...
You mean this THX Select-2 from Pioneer Elite that is rated at 140 wpc x7, but only outputs 61 wpc x 7 ch driven???
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/rec...-receiver.html
How can they go from 140 watts to 61 watts?
THX certification?
You've taken that article a bit out of context Acu, heh. For that test, all speakers were set to large ( not really sure why anyone would run a 7.1 setup with all speakers set to large ), and all figures were worst-case scenario. If you read the full article, the reviewer actually gives the reciever a fairly stellar rating. His only minus ratings were for the crappy remote and plain-jane on screen menu.
Regardless, I run that very same reciever now on a 3.1 setup and I can still play it louder/clearer then any human can stand while sitting in the room. I have had friends say they could hear the music booming from my house fairly clearly once they got out of their cars and were headed to my door. Would seperates improve upon this? I sincerely doubt it, but I'm not discounting the possibility either. In any case, I bought a reciever because I required the flexibilty of a reciever to handle many many sources, including xbox, dvd, satellite, computer, Ipod, xm satellite radio, Velodyne DD-15 on-screen calibration tool, and my near future addition of a blu-ray player. The switching is seamless with the exception of the occassional HDCP hickups, no fault of the recievers. Is there a seperate that can do all that? probably, but I doubt for cheaper then a $1000, and then I'll need an amp, and again I'll be looking at another $1000 or so, especially since my endstate speaker setup will be 7.1. All in all, it is more cost effective, and performs just as well as seperates.
apologies for the long winded response, I really summed up my opinion earlier on the matter when I said the real consideration when choosing the seperate or intergrated route is the intended use for the system as a whole.
