AVR vs seperates


Trying to figure out which way to go. My HT room is setup for 6.1 with a Zone 2 (4pair of speakers throughout house for background music/entertaining) My main purpose for setup is movies/sports t.v (95% of time) and 2 channel (5% of time) My two main speakers are Martin Logan Ascents (200W@4ohms) center is Martin Logan Cinema (200W@4ohm) rear surrounds and rear center are inceiling SpeakerCraft AIMones (100W@8ohms) Haven't decided on a sub yet (open to suggestions. So with that info, can anyone recommend which way to go to do movies right? Budget around $2000-2500. Thanks.

Jorge
jorgeg
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. :)