kennyt

Well, it's time to replace my bedroom receiver, and I have narrowed it down to these three, all are very good, and feature packed. All have their own benefits and losses, I want to hear what you all would pick and why!

For some further info, this will be for the bedroom system that is running the Kef 5005.2, 5.1 system, which are highly efficient, so power is not a factor. My current TV is a Panasonic plasma until I go with a larger (52"-60") LCD down the road, and sources are HD Cable, Blu-ray, HD DVD, and a universal player.

Give me YOUR opinion and help sway me to one over the others!

I will be buying ASAP, so vote and comment early to be heard!

Ken

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CharlyD

The Onkyo has roughly the same feature set as the Denon, but for a few hundred dollars less. For myself, an important feature is the ability to stream networked audio - a feature not included with the Marantz.

kennyt

I use Mac's, so neither will stream audio from my computer without another device. FWIW I have several devices to do this already so streaming isn't really important to me, this is also for a bedroom system, so won't be playing music for parties etc (what I usually stream for)

I currently feel the weak spot of the Marantz is it's lack of 1080p video scaling, sound wise, I had the 8001, great unit, and it does all the audio decoding I want.

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rlpiii

I also think 1080p up-conversion, if not at least pas-thru, is very important.
I think you should also consider a Yamaha.

I have 2 Yamaha and 2 Pioneer receivers.

I tend to like the sound of the Yamaha over the Pioneer, and the Yamahas seem to have more options.

I would also make sure that whatever you get has a sleep timer on it if you are going to use it for the bedroom.

Marantz DVD players and receivers are usually just re-boxed Pioneers which is not something I wanted.

kennyt

Actually Marantz and Denon are made by the same parent company and factory.

Sleep timer also not a big deal to me, I have yet to use one, and doubt that I will start soon, when I am tired, I turn off the rig and go to sleep.

I am thinking that scaling might be the determining factor for me, especially if I get a larger LCD in the next x years.....

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Ken Taraszka, MD
Associate Editor
http://avrev.com/
http://hometheaterreview.com/
http://www.avrevforum.com/

TheMoose

What can I say, I love my 3080ci but I wish I'd bought the 4308ci!
Good sound plenty of power HDMI 1.3 & a killer GUI!