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RX-A4A, MA7100HP, X3800H, MRX 540, DRX 3.4 ... help ...

TooSteep

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Sep 15, 2018
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I have moved into a new place after 6 years of not being able to use/setup my own gear. I'm excited to now put together a joint home theater/stereo listening system.

I have a set of late 90's Dunlavy towers and a Dunlavy SC I A/V that I plan to use as L R C. If it turns out they are not up to modern speaker standards, I can replace them.

I plan to add an SVS SB-1000 Pro sub (or two) and I would love to add 2 wireless, portable rear surrounds (one reason I have the Yamaha on the list). I could also wire two surrounds in back of the listening position if I must.

Listening position will be quite close ~ 8-9 feet from the wall the L R C speakers are against. Room is 20' x 20', but open to one side to another largish room, with an open hallway across from the L R C speaker wall.

Will watch a lot of streaming movies - I have a late model 4K Apple TV for this. I will also be watching TV via a cable box.


I will also use the system for 2.0 or 2.1 or 2.2 channel stereo listening. I'll stream TIDAL and Spotify. Happy to stream through the AVR or add a Wiim Pro Plus.

I have a 90s VPI turntable and phono preamp and will also listen to vinyl. Not because 'hi-fidelity', but because I have several hundred obscure LPs that never made their way onto CD or streaming services.

I also have a few thousand CDs that I've been too lazy to rip, and would like to occasionally yank out and toss into a CD player. Maybe some day I'll put them on a hard drive and use something like Roon to listen with??

I love the idea of room correction. Have read a few mitchco (https://accuratesound.ca/) articles, and think it sounds like it would be a great thing to do, but I have zero experience, and most of the acronyms/technical terms fly over my head.

I am lost trying to decide between the 5 AVRs listed in the title (or others). I know that this class of AVR doesn't usually get recommended by Amir in his ASR reviews, but I also don't know which of his issues with them would be audible to me. I would tend to lean towards the most luddite friendly gear that would still deliver me effective room correction, and ease of usability across all my use cases.

Each of these - Yamaha RX-A4A, JBL MA7100HP, Denon X3800H, Anthem MRX 540, Integra DRX 3.4 - cost in the $2,000 CAD range, so it boils down to supporting my use cases, and ease of configuration, with price not really a factor.

Thank you for any insights.
 
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If you can try to download user manuals for the different units. I would then read them and see which one is easy to set up vs difficult. You want to make things easy on yourself. Most of those units will work fine. Good luck and have fun!
 
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