Anthem AVM 30 vs. Parasound Halo C2

I was disgusted that the S&V review didn't discuss the Bryston SP 1.7 - I own one and feel it blows away the Parasound (and I ever was impressed by any of my friend's anthem stuff). Haven't heard the Krell, so I can't comment there... but having made the move from a 1055 myself, well, I don't think it can get much better than the Bryston - 20yr warranty, 2ch bypass, absolute purist piece (no video switching!!). Yeah there's obviously a lot better straight-up 2ch stuff out there, but this is the best sounding (for music) HT pre-pro I've ever encountered.

The self calibration on the parasound was 'ok' at best, it did a HORRIBLE job with the sub - it wanted to think our DD15 was 45ft away and cranked the gain up by approx. 15db!!!! can you say oops? any person even without an SPL meter can manually enter speaker distances and guess gain better than most auto-setup things, it's for (no offense to anyone on the 'gon) folks with far more money than knowledge who are either too cheap to have someone configure it for them, or don't know well enough to set it up themselves.