I too wanted surround sound" for movies/tv audio and possibly occasional audio use. It's tricky and def a compromise when trying to keep your two channel audio system intact. After a lot of homework I managed to keep my main system and add surround. I have Harbeth SLH5 + as the main fronts and an REL s510 as an audio subwoofer, and a pair of SVS 3000for video subwoofer. I added a denon surrond series integrated amplifier. Took the TV audio out to th eDenon optical input, then the front channel out from the Denon to the Home Theater Bypass input on my Pass re-amp. Took an RCA output from the preamp to the RCA input on the Pass 250.8 amp- that gives me as clean a front channel audio for surround as I can get. Then I run center and rear speakers off of the Denon's powered speaker outputs. When I listen to a movie in surround sound I flip on the HT bypass inout (and turn on the Denon) on the Pass Pre-amp- the front channel audio is running thru my Harbeths and the other channels are coming from the Denon. When I want pure 2 channel audio I just select my normal audio input on the pre amp and it no longer is playing the source fed to it from the Denon. In my case I got lucky- the Pass amp has BOTH balanced and RCA inputs that are "live" at the same time- I run balanced outputs from the Pass pre-amp to the balanced inputs on the Pass amp (for my audio playback), leaving the RCA's coming from the Pass Pre-amp (it has both RCA and Balanced outputs) hardwired to the RCA inputs on the Pass Amp. It's take another paragraph to explain the three subwoofer set up too but it all works seamlessly.
Home Theater Bypass , why am I hearing this now.
I have a Home Theater and when I upgraded my Onkyo to a Marantz it was a true Upgrade I was impressed, anyway like any other hobby I wanted to make improvements on top of what I just gained. The more I read the more I realize AVR HT receivers will never get you a tru HIFI experience because of the processing that takes place and a dedicated 2 ch is the only way to go ask Millercarbon he will surly be all over this one. I only have one room in my house that doubles as a home theater and listening room. I was ready to pick up a Prisma NP5 streamer (to move to my rack and network ) and a Denafrips ares Dac thinking I would get an upgrade to my source that is Tidal over my phone over the air currently( anything is better than this method). Im wondering if its a waste of time and money since I plan on using it with my AVR, then I stumbled onto guys talking about HT bypass for this reason. I haven't read or herd HT bypass yet on this Forum and wanted to know what you all thought, at some point i wanted to get a 8k marantz Processor and dedicated Amp but before I drop $7k I want to make sure I figure out this HT bypass because I want better High Rez audio from my HT system.