re: Home Audio Question

quote:

---

I plan to add more speakers and a subwoofer at a later date.

---

How many more speakers? 5.1? 7.1.2 (Atmos)? I would recommend deciding on the largest surround setup you can see yourself going to and making sure you pick a receiver with that many channels of amplification. If you think you’re going to use wireless surrounds, that’s another thing to take into account.

Also as others have said, make sure it actually has a phono input. Not all receivers do.

I’m partial to Denon receivers. Just checked and Best Buy has the AVR-S970H for $640 right now. The AVR-X1800H is $750 but you might find it for sale less than $700. Main difference between the two is that the AVR-X series has Audessey MultEQ XT (XT32 on the really high end versions) while the AVR-S series has regular Audessey MultEQ.

The main thing I like about Denon, other than good sound and the fact that they generally don’t skimp on features, is that they tend to give you a lot of flexibility with amp assignment (using spare channels as height speakers, rear surrounds, zone 2, etc.) and I/O (letting you mix audio and video sources). But I have an X3700H so can’t speak to the exact capabilities of the S970H in that regard.

You might not need a lot of those features, but my experience in the AVR world is that there’s usually not a tradeoff between features/sound until you get to really high-end hifi amps. In other words, the manufacturers all tend to put better amplifiers in their receivers that have more features. You don’t generally find opportunities to pay less for a “bare bones” AVR with better amplification but less bells and whistles. At least not for 5.1+ channel AVRs (2-channel is a different conversation).