some clarifications
Thanks Chopin_Guy for the response, and here is my promised follow-up.
None of what follows is directly related to my questions above, so if you think my questions are clear enough, you can just skip this post. But in case people want to know more about why I'm asking, how the receiver would be used, and with what other equipment, here is more information than you require. (And really, I didn't ask "which one of these should I get", so none of that should be pertinent. But perhaps it can help anyway. If nothing else, I might link to it when I ask more questions in the future.
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I have been rethinking my HT setup not because I'm unhappy with the gear, but because what I have is not serving my practical needs. I live in a fairly small house with my wife and 2 kids, and I have much less time than I'd like to enjoy movies and music, so lots of compromises are necessary, beginning with no fully dedicated HT room.
Currently my AV equipment is split between 2 rooms, a rec room in the basement being a roughy half-dedicated movie room, and the living room serving, among dozens of other purposes, as the music listening room. Both rooms are far from ideal. The rec room almost exactly 20x10 (2:1 ratio, don't look at me, I didn't design the house
) and open (w/o door) to a hallway leading to stairs. As part of the room serves other purposes, the part used for watching movies takes up just a bit over half the room - about 12x10 - and feels small. In the room I have a 42" Hitachi rear-projection TV, Panasonic DVD-F87 DVD-player, Panasonic SA-HE100 Receiver, and Hsu Ventriloquist VT-12 speakers with Hsu STF-2 subwoofer. The receiver is from 2002, the rest from 2004. I probably spent less than $1,700 total on the entire system, and I've been quite happy with it. It was always meant to be a "wait and see where the TV technology goes" temporary solution, and it has performed more than well for the expectations.
Stereo sound has been my hobby much longer than surround-sound AV home theater, so the stereo equipment in my living room is a level above the basement, bad pun intended. It consists of a Music Hall mmf-5 turntable with Goldring 1012 cartridge, Marantz CDR510 CD player/recorder, Harman Kardon HK-3480 2-channel receiver, and RBH 661-SE speakers. I spent about $1,350 on all of that, which I believe is quite a success. The room is essentially L-shaped 22x18 with a quadrant cut out, but also half-open to the rest of the house (kitchen, entryway, stairs) and with an awkward column in the middle. Still, the sound is great on the entire sofa I use as the main listening spot, at least when the speakers are where I want them. (Alas, most of the time, they are too close to the walls, for the safety of our younger son as well as the speakers' own. Even so, the sound is more than decent.)
My plan used to be to eventually collect enough RBH Signature series speakers for a surround system, get a decent receiver or perhaps Emotiva separates, and whatever flat-screen TV is good bang for the buck at that time, and merge the audio and HT systems into one. However, the rec room seems too small for those speakers (probably not acoustically, but physically - there would be no place for the surrounds of that size), and in the living room, the speakers in any acoustically acceptable position would be terribly in the way and potentially exposed to running boys.
I came to realize that compromises would be necessary and started looking at on-wall speakers. (In-wall is not an option because the wall where LCR speakers would go doesn't have enough depth. About 1-1.5" behind the drywall is a cinder-block firewall between our townhouse and the next one.) I was lucky (I hope) to find EMP online store selling RBH WM-30 and WM-24 speakers (presumably being discontinued) for $119 a piece. I had no opportunity to listen to them, but my experience with the SE series is excellent, I saw that WM's use similar drivers (aluminum-cone woofers and soft-dome tweeters) and I read the Audioholics review of the M-series which declared them excellent values at four times the current price. What could I conclude other than "Buy now!"? So now, while waiting for the speakers to arrive, I am trying to plan the rest of the changes.
I want a decent receiver to drive them, equally competent for music and for movies. But I can live with some interim solution for a while - either my old Panasonic, or just using 2 channels - until I find just what I need for a good price. These days I hardly ever get to listen to anything at high volume; if I have to wait for a year to buy the receiver, I may not notice too much. (And a similar I-can-wait argument applies to the TV - I see some nice deals on Panasonic and Samsung plasmas, but I am not sure I am ready to buy yet.)
This should, hopefully, answer all likely questions about my setup. As for the budget, well, you can see by my other purchases - ideally, I'd like to buy a $1,000+ receiver for $500 or less.
