I am a purchasing a pair of Athena Audition FS-2 speakers as a start to building my own home theatre system. I'm on a budget and listen to music 80% of the time (audio CDs). I'm confused as to whether to purchase an A/V receiver or to just go with an integrated amplifier. I rarely listen to the radio and am only going to be using the FS-2s (no center channel, subs or surrounds). I also have a progressive scan DVD player for watching DVDs the other 20% of the time. Should I go with the amp or with a receiver. What models do you recommend for under $400?
It really all depends on what you want to do in the long term really. An integrated is a nice piece if you really just want to listen to music. But you mentioned in your post that you want to start "building my own home theatre system." An integrated amp won't cover off on that...reason being, most (if not all..) integrateds only have analog inputs...if you want to hook up your dvd and have surround, you'll need and a/v receiver that has digital inputs and can decode the various dolby signals on any given DVD. However, as you stated, if you plan to just use the two speakers and don't mind hooking up the dvd player via analog input (no decoding) then the integrated should work fine. There's lots of good integrated amps out there from NAD, Rotel, Marantz, Denon, etc. So, if you can look into the future and know that you don't want to add all those extra speakers and don't need 5.1/7.1, then an integrated should work just fine.
Good luck.
