Great multichannel amps do not cut it in stereo

sya... 

Some curious thoughts I have about this thread. Not a single mention that the AVR600 has a Class G Amplifier , 150 WPC & bi-wireable in 2 Channel. Did you ever utilize its Direct Stereo mode to eliminate any and all digital processing?

marcimzienski,
You are absolutely right. One way to be sure you have the right answer is when its proven in spite of whatever you may want to believe. That is how I can be quite certain you are right, and anyone who thinks home theater gear can ever touch stereo gear is simply wrong.

When my dream of a lifetime, a dedicated listening/home theater room came true I could hardly wait for the remodel to be finished to start shopping for all the great home theater components. Which I of course did by following all the accepted wisdom of THX home theater 5.1 surround sound yada yada. I say yada yada now but back then it was Gospel.

Unfortunately for the surround sound setup I had this nasty habit of going and listening to everything I was even halfway interested in. Immediately every single thing I tried that was home theater oriented sounded like crap compared to every single thing that was not. Including an awful lot of very high end multi-channel components that cost far more than I'd ever even consider spending.

Not just receivers, which you never really expect will sound all that good anyway. But separates too, even down to separate pre-amps and amps. I was so determined to get a good sounding surround system I even tried some separate surround processors. I tried everything.

Sorry, but it is all crap. Like, the good stereo gear is so much better than the good surround gear its not even close. Its in your face obvious. Surround is the apex and the epitome of Robert Harley's famous saying that if the first watt isn't any good why would you want 200 more of them? Surround is crap.

In hindsight this all makes total sense. For whatever budget you may have, does not matter, the fact is you take that budget and divide by two and get a lot bigger number than when you divide by 5. More money per channel simply equals more quality per channel.

But that's not all! It turns out one of the hardest things to do in high end is provide good clean steady power while keeping the noise from one thing getting into and ruining the sound from another. This is as true within a component as between components. This is why every good component, and especially higher end more critical components like phono-stages, go to extreme lengths to isolate their power supplies from the other sensitive circuits. The physical demands of surround systems here are quite simply obviously incompatible with high quality. Where less is more they try to tell you more is more. Its not.

But wait! It gets even worse! Because, bottom line, people listening to stereo are ..... listening to stereo. And that is ALL they are doing. They aren't distracted by looking at anything else. They don't have a projector fan blowing overhead or a screen flickering in their face. They aren't trying to follow a plot and they usually aren't munching on popcorn either. Often times they turn the lights way down or even off to concentrate on the sound and the sound alone.

So why in a profit driven business would you ever devote all your resources to delivering perfect sound to customers who despite whatever they might say clearly have voted with their wallets to put video above audio? You'd have to be crazy.

Which they are not. Which ultimately is why no surround system can touch a good stereo. And never will.

You could also do an integrated + HT processor. At least the Luxman units let you separate the amp, so you can feed it directly from another source, such as a HT processor, or an Anthem HT receiver.

I am seriously thinking of going this route.

Interesting comments. It really is a dilemma. I'll give my solution which works for me and my ears. First a little about my cave, 15 x 23 x8 with room treatment.  HT gear is 5.1 Lexicon MC12B, Emotiva amp (my Krell died) B&W 803D2, Oppo 103, Hitachi 65. It never did 2Ch stereo justice although it was still very nice. Then I went to a 2 system setup in same room, Rogue integerated, VPI Prime Polk SrsSda 3.1TL. Also very nice, actually better than very nice. Then noticed everything being a bit congested. So I started to think about decongesting by finding a way to open things up. I build my own switching unit which allowed me to use both systems with one set of speakers thus eliminating the Polks out of the room. I'm of the opinion that 2Ch will beat HT in most cases. I learned this by playing the same source thru both systems simultaneously via switching between them a almost immediate comparison. I think I've hit the jackpot, at least in my view. FWIW I have yet to hear a better soundstage than what them old vintage Polks could produce and I've heard a lot of great setups in my days. Polks were really on to something before they went mass market.