I had the same dilemma one room to serve dual purpose. I tried the ht being the mothership and thought it sounded good until i heard a dedicated two channel system. Jump forward i have two systems in my single room and they both sound fantastic. When you try to multi task you will always have a compromise some where. Either ht will suffer or two channel will suffer. Example my mono blocks are class A and sound great but class A is not a wise choice for ht. My ht pioneer elite is class D and for two channel digital, it is needles in the ears and fast listener fatigue. I know not everyone has the option for two systems but if you have to go with one you need to decide where you will compromise. For me music always has and will come first.
Home Theater Bypass , why am I hearing this now.
I have a Home Theater and when I upgraded my Onkyo to a Marantz it was a true Upgrade I was impressed, anyway like any other hobby I wanted to make improvements on top of what I just gained. The more I read the more I realize AVR HT receivers will never get you a tru HIFI experience because of the processing that takes place and a dedicated 2 ch is the only way to go ask Millercarbon he will surly be all over this one. I only have one room in my house that doubles as a home theater and listening room. I was ready to pick up a Prisma NP5 streamer (to move to my rack and network ) and a Denafrips ares Dac thinking I would get an upgrade to my source that is Tidal over my phone over the air currently( anything is better than this method). Im wondering if its a waste of time and money since I plan on using it with my AVR, then I stumbled onto guys talking about HT bypass for this reason. I haven't read or herd HT bypass yet on this Forum and wanted to know what you all thought, at some point i wanted to get a 8k marantz Processor and dedicated Amp but before I drop $7k I want to make sure I figure out this HT bypass because I want better High Rez audio from my HT system.