Hopefully McArthur will chime in - he is in the biz.

I have the Yamaha 367 and it is functional. I am not a demanding as some on the board. I can't really find a negative except the remote buttons require a Lillipution to assist in switching.

Find an amp without a receiver. Buy a dedicated amp and don't waste the money on the radio electronics .

This about sums it up. Receivers under $2K are a commodity. You buy for features. The specs are all bogus or meaningless. Power is a good example. Do they rate it @ all channels driven? Or only one or two? At what impedance? Etc etc. So buy for features. Most people use very few of the multitude of features btw. DTS & Dolby Digital decoding is all that matters & that is chip driven & often done in your Blu-ray or DVD player anyway.

The best sounding units will come from Arcam, NAD, Marantz & Cambridge (insert disclaimer here) but all are well over the OP's stated budget.

Ian

They all have more power than I can practically use right now but I understand what you are saying. Speaker for computers used to be notorious for stuff like that. 3.4oz for both speakers with the built in amp and would be "375w rpms....".

When looking at the higher end sites, those brands are always rated highly. Unfortunately my budget is not.

- unless he buys used...

I bought an av Yamaha receiver (V 2065) off Craigslist for about half off new price. Turns out that Yamaha has a remote control phone app for its networked receivers so you can hide the thing way out of sight. My Verizon FIOS set top box and my multi room Sonos system also has an iphone app so you don't need all those remote controls lying around. Once I hook up my wifi enabled thermostat and get the app for the alarm system I think I will finally have home automation courtesy of the iphone (as long as the power doesn't go out).

+1

I'd say a large percentage of used receivers (for sale) actually have very few hours on them before their "bleeding edge" owners want to upgrade to the latest/greatest. If you can find something used that fits the bill, I would go that route. You would certainly get more bang for your buck. YMMV of course.

As far as features, I would probably try and find something with half-way decent DACs, HDMI 1.3 or better (1.4a if you want full 3D and super hi-rez support), toroidal power supply, Audyssey room calibration, etc.

If considering used, the Marantz SR-8002 is worth a look IMO (and they have 2 HDMI outs). They are OOP but you can find nice used or NOS ones out there. I just saw one on fleabay sell for $600 (and have seen them go for cheaper than that).

The Yamaha has HDMI 1.4a and •YPAO which works as well as Audyssey according to the forums.

Local craigslist has this but I would only want the SR-580 and speakers. Maybe the TV as well.

Marantz Home Theater/Klipsch

There are couple others local to you that might be worth checking out:

yamaha rx v1600 receiver
Pioneer Elite VSX-40 7.1-CH A/V Receiver

Today (3.31.12) only:
Denon AVR-1312 for $155 shipped
Woot® : One Day, One Deal

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