AVR vs seperates

Definatly seperates, you will be very hard pressed to find a reciever that is gonna do a good job with those Martin Logans.

I dont know how many pre-pro's have zone 2 capabilitys though.
You could always go with something like a Denon avr3805, and get a 3 channel amp for the front three 4ohmer speakers, and use the denon to power the rear 8ohmers and zone 2 & 3....

Im sure you will get alot of other good answers on this, but even recievers who claim to be able to do 4ohm loads will not be able to drive those ML's properly and do them jusitce. Especially not in that budget.

Go with a good reciever (i like the denon cause of the pure direct mode) and a good 3 channel amp, and you will be able to power the all 6 speakers of HT plus an additional pair of zone 2 speakers. The denon makes a decent pre-amp with the pure direct mode.

Going All-seperates will probably put you a bit past yer budget

which im sure i will be proven to be wrong with the next few responses.

Thanks for the tip Slappy, any 3 channel amps come to mind that might fit the bill?

Jorge

It really depends on your budget. If you want to go pretty inexpencive you can look into adcom, parasound, B&K, rotel, or some marantz monoblocks. You might want to do a search in the forums on any threads asking about what to amplify thier ML's with, this will probably give you a good place to start looking. :)