Start with a nice 5 channel power amp. Keep the Rotel for now as a pre only. This will save you from upgrading again when you decide the denon was a bad move.
Old top-of-the-line A/V Receiver vs. new mid-level
Howdy all. First time posting here, thanks for any help anyone can offer.
Basically I have been looking at a lot of the older, top-rated Denon A/V receivers as a replacement for my current Rotel RSX-1065. Understand that it performs great, but I am stepping up from the 600 series B&Ws to the 800 series (804S to start in the front, will upgrade to one of the HTMs for center and probably 805S's in the rear). Since I do not have internal decoding on the Rotel for the newer HD audio codecs anyway, I am going from Blu-ray and HD-DVD into a Zektor switcher then into the sole set of analog inputs on the Rotel.
My question is, since I am going analog anyway right now, would getting into an older A/V receiver, like a Denon AVR-5xxx series be a step up for me to feed some better sound into the 800's? In particular, the Denon AVR-5800/5803s have not one but two sets of 7.1 external analog inputs, so I could immediately also get rid of my switcher, as well as what I would think would be a step up in my amplification.
Would love to get something like a Rotel RMB-1096 with RSP-1098/68/69, but I just can't afford that right now. Also, a great condition AVR-5800 can be had for as little as $500-600 on eBay.
Thanks for any opinions!
Basically I have been looking at a lot of the older, top-rated Denon A/V receivers as a replacement for my current Rotel RSX-1065. Understand that it performs great, but I am stepping up from the 600 series B&Ws to the 800 series (804S to start in the front, will upgrade to one of the HTMs for center and probably 805S's in the rear). Since I do not have internal decoding on the Rotel for the newer HD audio codecs anyway, I am going from Blu-ray and HD-DVD into a Zektor switcher then into the sole set of analog inputs on the Rotel.
My question is, since I am going analog anyway right now, would getting into an older A/V receiver, like a Denon AVR-5xxx series be a step up for me to feed some better sound into the 800's? In particular, the Denon AVR-5800/5803s have not one but two sets of 7.1 external analog inputs, so I could immediately also get rid of my switcher, as well as what I would think would be a step up in my amplification.
Would love to get something like a Rotel RMB-1096 with RSP-1098/68/69, but I just can't afford that right now. Also, a great condition AVR-5800 can be had for as little as $500-600 on eBay.
Thanks for any opinions!