Yes, I do home theater but it isn't my first priority. My first priority is music...analog music...in two channels...from my VPI Scout and Jolida tubed phono stage...which I don't want digitally corrected. I don't have the space for separate systems so I compromise. I've always had a problem with the word corrected, makes it seem like the artist didn't get his recording right. I don't care about industry best practices, I care about what sounds right to my ears. I took the appreciated suggestion for the Crown, tried it, decided against it because in my system with my speakers it was not a good fit. Is it so difficult to understand that I didn't jump up, yell "Yureka I've hit the affordable mother lode!" put my Adcoms on Audiogon, and immediately order three more of them? I would need three more if I kept my 5 channel 7000 and didn't want to try to blend the Crown's inherent sound with the Adcom. My Marantz, considering the way I choose to use it, serves me very well and is only wasted money in your opinion. In my opinion, in my system setup, my nearly 20 years old Adcom blew the Crown out of the rack in two channel. Sorry.
You've come here to solicit advice. The Crown was just something to try, same as Emotiva, Outlaw, Marantz, others.... It's why I recommended Amazon since if you didn't like the Crown you could easily send it back.
The rest was based on information. Whether how much or how little was supplied. When multi-channel is mentioned then collectively we are going to go with what we know and that is multi channel.
Here's the main issue:
You may not know what you think you know. The reason I say that is you state that you have a problem with the word correction making it seem like the artist didn't get it 'right'.
Correction has to do with the room that sound is being reproduced in. The artist, mastering engineer, etc.... Have zero idea as to what room their material is going be played back in. Correction is intended to get the room as neutral as possible as a starting point. It's trying to level the playing field as no two rooms are quite alike.
Room correction, Gain staging if the amps have gain controls, etc... are all simply best practices. Sorry but I don't know any more competent way to go here.
It's how I have a $1900 setup that I ran A/B'd against a $22,000 setup. Ariel Acoustic L9's ($15,000) and Lexicon stack ($7,000) and the owner simply couldn't pick his jaw up off the floor for a few minutes.
What I'm trying to figure out as of your last post is that if you know so much already what are you doing here?
