Thanks for your response. I'm located in India. The govt here charges a 28% GST on AVRs. Therefore I had kept a budget of INR 100000 which is roughly equivalent to USD 1000. AVRs rarely go on sale here but the prices do drop by 20-30 % when new models arrive.
The local dealer here is a multi brand shop and he let me have the 1710 for a day last Sunday. A person had come along to do the set up and I could play around with it for about 4-5 hours in my HT. I played some of my favorite bluerays and high rez music from a USB drive etc but cannot say i found the sound too exciting over my 608.
I spoke to the dealer after I saw your post and he is recommending Pioneer LX 304 over the Denon 3600 stating that it has better amplifiers (what ever that means). Both are available at similar price point. Would love to hear from people who have the 304.
This is a US based forum for the most part, so unless you indicate your location up front, you may not get relevant suggestions. Your prices/choices will be quite a bit different and really hard for us to anticipate your tax situation (it even varies state to state in the US).
You seem to expect significant differences in what's a fairly mature technology, i.e. an avr. They're more similar than different, except for the features/connectivity and their own flavor of DSP/REQ. The quality of the amps are reasonable for most uses, and vary a bit with power ratings altho the Marantz slimlines tend to be on the low side of the power spectrum. Hard to properly compare two units, too. Not sure what "excitement" you were expecting, that could be merely your expectations at play.
I don't take recommendations from audio sales people generally. They usually have their own reasons for pushing a particular product, altho its possible to get a good one I suppose who has only your interests at heart....have him explain the differences in amp as to why the Pioneer is better and get back to us
. The Pioneer may employ class D amps, but if executed well should be seamless compared to the class AB amps in most others. A few differences I notice the Pioneer 304 lacks compared to the Denon 3600 is a full set of pre-outs, which may or may not be interesting depending on whether you want the option of using external amplification; I'd also say the REQ software in the Denon's AudysseyXT32/SubEQ is superior to the MCACC in the Pioneer, particularly for subs (the Denon can separately adjust level/delay for two subs, the Pioneer doesn't), and much better than your current unit's Audyssey 2EQ.
You could also perhaps just continue to use your current avr and bluray player for 4k video to display and audio to avr, if your bluray player allows such, until such time as you have your Atmos speakers installed....
