Suggestions for audiophile grade receiver for Home theater setup

Good suggestions all around.  As noted:

Use theater bypass on the 2 channel amp.

Buy separates if you can for the surround system.  from low to high: Marantz, Anthem, Storm, Lyngdorf, Trinnov.

The sub is tricky, as noted.  I have them wired to both the 2 channel preamp and surround processor.  No perfect way to do this.

I have done all of this and am still upgrading:  Custom designed and constructed 17' by 16' theater,  Simaudio 891, 2 Simaudio 761 bridged, Sonus Faber Serafino. for the 2 channel,  Yamaha CXA5200 processor, MXA5200 11 channel amp (using 8 channels only for ceiling and surroiund), Simaudio 400M for center channel, Sonus Faber Olympica Nova CII center channel speaker, older surround and ceiling speakers, 2 SVS SB16 Ultra subs, JVC DLA-NX700 projector, 120"" screen, Kaleidescape Strato V, madVR Envy Core, custom cables for key components, mostly Bluejeans for the rest.  70 amps of power, custom ventilation system.  7.2.4 system,  Whew!

Upgrade plans over next year replace the Yamaha processor and amp with Trinnov Altitude16 and Amplitude 16, replace surround and ceiling speakers with Sonus Faber.

Maybe someday, upgrade to 4 subs, perhaps SVS  SB17.  Consider upgrading Sonus Faber Serafino so Amati Supreme, when my rich uncle dies (just kidding).

Now, I designed all of this and did much of the installation.  This was 17 years in the making with lots of help from some of the best people in my area and nationally.  Calibration is best done by professionals.  I use it for hours every day for classical music, movies, sports, etc.

Final word of advice, gets lots of help from consultants and then make your own decisions.  Have fun with it!

Happy holidays everybody!

100% Marantz with the Dirac upgrade. Recently swapped out an Anthem 1140 for Marantz AV 20 and AMP 20. Huge upgrade. Anthem’s ARC is good but no comparison to Dirac Live, especially now with the Dirac ART package.

McIntosh makes AV components, some with room correction as well. 

Great suggestions - in my case, running the AVR pre-out to HT bypass (Simaudio Moon), with TT, CD, & Streamer going directly into the Moon.  

After experimenting with several subwoofer setups, I've settled on simply feeding the subwoofer straight from the Moon pre-outs.   Since it is an older Moon (only one set of pre-outs), and my subwoofer has line level inputs and outputs, I run the preamp signal to the subwoofer and then out of the subwoofer (a straight-through connection, according to the subwoofer manufacturer) to the power amp. I then set up the AVR to think the system has no subwoofer, so Dirac adjusts accordingly (and thus only affects movies/video/TV).  This may limit some LFR effects, but I don't miss them for movies, and I also have direct control of the subwoofer (level, phase, parametric EQ, etc) for both music and movies.  This has resulted in the best performance for music in my system, while perhaps imposing some slight limitiation on home-theatre performance (which I haven't really noticed).   

As always, your setup may work better with a different solution, but that's part of the fun, right?  

If you like your NAD Class-D power amps, then look at an NAD Class-D Receiver, continuing to use the stereo amps you have now for front left and right in surround sound too by way of passthrough. This should get you use of their Bluesound app too, which also has multiroom possibilities.

Another way to escape from the usual AVR power amps is to go with a surround processor like the Tonewinner AT-500. Emotiva probably has one with the same internals too. Don’t know how good the volume control is though. Hook these up to a multichannel Class-D amp from the likes of VTV in Ohio.

Looking to the future, if adventuresome, there are the Nuprime-X AoIP solutions. The H16-AIP is already here to do HDMI processing, sending audio over IP to their MCX-800AD. The H16 is still kinda a prototype though and does not support Dirac. Next year the coming HX16 should be the proper solution. If HDMI sources are not intended, then just hook a Mac up to the MCX-800AD via USB.