recommended AV receivers ??

[jim02]

currently while my old Kenwood is dying slowly, i'm looking for a decent middle-class priced AV receiver that has all the latest features,
like mp3 streaming from various sources..
some brands that are crossing my mind are; pioneer, marantz, denon, yamaha, onkyo...

if someone has any experience/suggestions/recommendations, please let me know !

[einstein36]

Hi there,
let me throw another brand out there for you....: Integra recievers:

http://www.integrahometheater.com/prod_class.cfm?class=Receiver

I have one of these bad boys and man...these recievers will rock your world...I have had mine for over 3 years or so and still awesome...

[LNerell]

What all do you need hooked up to it? I mean do you need a turntable? A lot of mid to lower end receivers don't offer turntable inputs anymore. Here at work within the last year we bought a bunch of Yamaha's lower end receivers and they seem to work pretty well (except for the turntable part). I currently have an older Yamaha receiver and I was thinking about staying with them and upgrading to the high end Yamaha receiver, we have one at work and its pretty nice, everything is programmable. But  the new Marantz receivers seem to have more stuff, so I am considering getting one of them instead. 

[jim02]

thanks for the tips!
i'll give it some time and thought..
i may end up with Denon or Marantz.. but you never know..

[jimzzzak]

I recently did quite a bit of research.

Here's a few pearls:

1.  Spend twice as much on speakers as you do on the AVR
2.  Strongly consider getting an AVR with Audyssey room correction.  This feature automatically corrects for your rooms characteristics which otherwise might significantly alter the sound you were supposed to hear.
3.  Look at the options for control with your smartphone or tablet
4.  Currently Onkyo and Denon seem to meet #2 and #3 above the best, and the price for room correction inclusion has dropped below $1,000 for teh first time
4.  If you need very specified help, consider joining and posting to AVS Forum http://www.avsforum.com/f/

Good luck.

[Paul Vnuk (Ma Ja Le)]

Also check out the two lines on offer from www.indyaudiolabs.com

They have revived the Acurus and Arigon brands and have a pretty full featured AVR coming out this year.  They just got a write up on cnet.

Paul

[ffcal]

I like my Rotel receiver (they're exceptionally quiet), but they're not that cheap.

Forrest

[jim02]

thank you all for your input!

i decided to go for a mid-class Marantz M-CR603.
it's a small unit that almost has all possibilities of streaming music from many different sources.
and it even has a decent CD player :-)

when i feel satisfied with this new unit, i'm gonna reorganize/digitalize my music collection and start selling my CDs.
it's not an easy decision.. but i cannot go on like this, having now way over 3000 CDs inhere..