Legacy Focus are very good speakers that deserve better than an AV receiver to realize their full capabilities. From past Stereophile measurements the Focus drop below 2 Ohms once in the bass and again in the lower mids, which will be hard for any AVR to deal with because their power supplies typically aren’t robust enough to effectively handle that load. But beyond that the preamp sections in AVRs are not that good either, and preamps are critical so this is a further bottleneck to better performance. With speakers of this caliber what you should do is get an AVR with preamp outputs (I recommend Yamaha) and then get a good quality stereo integrated amp with a HT bypass that you connect to the AVR via the front L/R preamp outs on the AVR and the speakers would be connected to the integrated (all your stereo sources are also only hooked up to the integrated, not the AVR). When hooked up this way HT operates as normal when the HT bypass input is chosen on the integrated and the AVR is in control, but when you choose the inputs of your stereo sources on the integrated it takes over and the AVR is completely out of the signal path for stereo listening, which is what you want. You need an integrated that is stable to 2 Ohms, and the Hegel H190 would be a good choice, and the Musical Fidelity M5 or Parasound Hint6 would also work among others. Anyway, the bottom line is the Focus are very good speakers that really deserve more than an AVR. Running them with an AVR is like putting budget all-season tires on a Porsche or Ferrari — yes they’ll still work but you won’t realize the full potential you paid for. Just my $0.02 FWIW, and best of luck.
