Is there a Musical HT Receiver....?

Denon and Nakamichi hurt my ears It's the EAD 1000 that's sweet like tubes.

There are a few Denon 5700s around from time to time right here on Audiogon in the $1200-1500.00 range that will offer reasonable musicality and the other options that you want. I had a 5700 for about six months before a lightning storm took it out. For the money it will offer most everything you could want...decent power, DSP flexibility, enough imputs and outputs to satisfy even the most equipment heavy HT enthusiast. Check it out!!

I recently installed an Adcom GTP-760 pre/pro in my ex-wife's HT system, and I must admit to being very impressed with its sound quality. It retails for $1800, but the unit I bought for my ex-wife was $1300 (plus s/h). The current issue of the Perfect Vision mag (issue #35) gave a very nice review to this model. I also noted a few days ago that Adcom has a new 7.1 channel pre/pro, the GTP-830, which has a MSRP of $1200. Haven't heard the 830, but I can vouch for the 760 being very good.

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! There is no such thing as a musical receiver.
Lee

....you can get very close with a Marantz 14Ex. No surprise, this thing is $4700 list, but the big Marantz has good two channel sound and the ability to bypass all the processor filters for clean 2 channel.

Is it as good as separates? Well, IMHO it's better than some of the lower end separtes and approaches some under $6K multichannel amp and processor set ups. (There's a good review in this month's Sterophile Guide to Home Theatre.) Built like a tank and easy to use ... the best two channel in a receiver and much better than the Yamaha RV-1 (too many bad sounding gimicks) and an ever so slight edge over the Dennon 5800. Great video switching -- it's really at home when you have a myriard of inputs to manage (Cable, Sat, Playstation II, DVD, DVD-A, Sony SCD-1 in my case).

This receiver is the cornerstone of my HT set-up. As good as it is, my Aranov tube monoblocks are MUCH better for 2 channel listening. To get into that "high-end" 2 channel league with HT, you'll to look at (and listen to)Classe, Bryston's best and the Theta Dreadnaught/Casablanca. Any of those three setups are clearly better sounding than the Marantz, but they should be, as they are $8 -$20K.

In sum, I'm not sure if low end separates (totaling the Marantz's $4700 list) will give you much better performance and certainly you want have the flexibilty of the Marantz's video switching and multisource management. And then there's that wonderful remote that is the very best. (Ok, I know this thread has been discussing some more modestly priced HT stuff, but the Marantz can be had for around $2700 or so on eBay or Audiogon.) --Lorne