I see no reason for that to be true. Our own host has recently stated that he would have never bought his Mark Levinson monoblocks with the knowledge he has today. He would be fine with a cheap chinese chip amp:
His next post is even more telling:
Let me give you just the main reasons I can immediately think of (there are potentially more:
- a $300 receiver typically would have limited output voltage and/or current needed to drive many speakers that have average sensitivity of say 85-90 dB and impedance between 3-8 ohms in the bass/mid bass range, some might have large phase angles too that such receivers don't usually have output devices and heat sinks to deal with the thermal issues
- It may have distortions in the certain frequency range within the audible band, and/or at the very low output levels as well as at the higher frequency range where many people may be quite sensitive to.
Regardless, I can see your point, I should have avoided making a generalized statement, and I usually would have qualified it by caveats like (
when unless operating in output level well below it's clipping point, with no DSP used etc. etc.). For some reason I generalized, as I was comparing it with a $5,000 AVR and in my mind, people who use such near flagship level AVRs likely have speakers that wouldn't do their best if driven by a $300 receiver.
It is hard to find any 2 channel receiver for $300 anyway, so it seems like I could use the Onkyo SR3100 that is a 5 channel AVR. That little thing can do 80 WPC into 8 ohms but it costs $399 on Amazon.
