Hello! New to this forum here but figured this may be a good place to get some advice on my new setup!
I just upgraded by two front towers to the B&W 603 Anniversary editions this past weekend. I have a 5.1 setup (AVR is Denon X3200W) where I'm slowly going to start upgrading components and the towers were my first priority as I listen to a lot of stereo music on them as I'm working from home (my desk is right behind the couch, kinda nice setup wise).
I went to Best Buy this weekend to demo a bunch of speakers and also decided to demo some amps and was surprised how different the sound was from a Denon to an Arcam. They had a Arcam 550 (open box) where they were able to sell it at $1,400 which seemed like a great deal? The downside is that they only had the Arcam AVR30 hooked up to it so I listened to the B&W's on them but the the Magnolia rep was saying that I should expect the same sound quality from the AVR550.
At that price point (plus or minus a few hundred), is the best I can do, or can I do better?
The only feature I really care about in a receiver is that it can do 4k HDR pass through, I don't really care about something greater then 5.1 as I don't plan on doing that until I get a significantly larger place. I care for sound quality more than features in an AVR but do still want it to support at least 5.1 and 4k hdr pass through.
I also just recently saw an Anthem MRX540 for a similar price range that I preordered on Crutchfield, thinking to try this one out as well? Also saw the Arcam AVR10 for $1,700 but that one has a pretty bad review on this site.
Thoughts on if I should stick with the Arcam AVR550 at this price point or get something different? I've thought about doing a seperate stereo amp with a home theater bypass but don't really have space for another "box" (as my fiance would say) on the stand as we live in an apt.
I just upgraded by two front towers to the B&W 603 Anniversary editions this past weekend. I have a 5.1 setup (AVR is Denon X3200W) where I'm slowly going to start upgrading components and the towers were my first priority as I listen to a lot of stereo music on them as I'm working from home (my desk is right behind the couch, kinda nice setup wise).
I went to Best Buy this weekend to demo a bunch of speakers and also decided to demo some amps and was surprised how different the sound was from a Denon to an Arcam. They had a Arcam 550 (open box) where they were able to sell it at $1,400 which seemed like a great deal? The downside is that they only had the Arcam AVR30 hooked up to it so I listened to the B&W's on them but the the Magnolia rep was saying that I should expect the same sound quality from the AVR550.
At that price point (plus or minus a few hundred), is the best I can do, or can I do better?
The only feature I really care about in a receiver is that it can do 4k HDR pass through, I don't really care about something greater then 5.1 as I don't plan on doing that until I get a significantly larger place. I care for sound quality more than features in an AVR but do still want it to support at least 5.1 and 4k hdr pass through.
I also just recently saw an Anthem MRX540 for a similar price range that I preordered on Crutchfield, thinking to try this one out as well? Also saw the Arcam AVR10 for $1,700 but that one has a pretty bad review on this site.
Thoughts on if I should stick with the Arcam AVR550 at this price point or get something different? I've thought about doing a seperate stereo amp with a home theater bypass but don't really have space for another "box" (as my fiance would say) on the stand as we live in an apt.