What’s your expected ratio of listening to 2 channel music versus watching TV/home theater (HT)?
Most folks on this site are predominantly music focused (that’s why the H/T section of forum is comparatively little utilized).
Are you open to more than one amplifier (one for music, one for HT)?
Are you ever planning to add more speakers for HT surround sound or the current state of art ATMOS?
If you are not open to more than one amplifier/processor, then just get an AVR, and realize that you are trading some 2ch music quality for convenience.
But if that’s the case, at your budget I’d go with an Anthem receiver. Otherwise if you just want something that’ll sound pretty good, can do all the home theater stuff and also stream 2ch music, get a marantz AVR around $1k and it’ll do a fine job to start. If you want better 2ch music quality, you can always add the integrated amp discussed below later.
If you are open to two boxes, then an integrated amplifier that will power your Cornwalls for music in the $2-3k range, and a HT processor or AVR in the $1k range might be a good solution. In this case, look for an integrated amp that has HT bypass (as was mentioned above).
Most folks on this site are predominantly music focused (that’s why the H/T section of forum is comparatively little utilized).
Are you open to more than one amplifier (one for music, one for HT)?
Are you ever planning to add more speakers for HT surround sound or the current state of art ATMOS?
If you are not open to more than one amplifier/processor, then just get an AVR, and realize that you are trading some 2ch music quality for convenience.
But if that’s the case, at your budget I’d go with an Anthem receiver. Otherwise if you just want something that’ll sound pretty good, can do all the home theater stuff and also stream 2ch music, get a marantz AVR around $1k and it’ll do a fine job to start. If you want better 2ch music quality, you can always add the integrated amp discussed below later.
If you are open to two boxes, then an integrated amplifier that will power your Cornwalls for music in the $2-3k range, and a HT processor or AVR in the $1k range might be a good solution. In this case, look for an integrated amp that has HT bypass (as was mentioned above).