Kal said it better than I could.
"Following that same logic, makes me wonder why so many claim a mid priced receiver, with sufficient power of course, is all that is needed to get great surround sound."
Actually your description is not a qualifier. It depends which mid priced receiver. The one on my system with the speakers I built to run on it is spooky good for $750. But you can't change the receiver to another brand and expect the same sound. ie. Denon, Onkyo etc.
There is a certain way surround equipment should be setup by the manufacturer or you can forget good sound no matter how much you spend. We live in a software world, the days of the brute force uber faceplate to the rescue solution is over. Smart equipment is slowly creeping in, and taking over. People who build real surround processors don't chat up their WBT connectors and 24/192 UBer DAC's, they point out the processor bank which allows proper speaker setup, room correction and EQ, and other essential setup parameters to be changed to put that unit in your world perfectly in real time.
Software rules, ie your bombs may be bigger but my bombs land EXACTLY where I want them everytime. You lose. :)
"That seems to imply the processor is one of the most important pieces in the chain."
Equal to the importance of the speakers, in many cases.
"Following that same logic, makes me wonder why so many claim a mid priced receiver, with sufficient power of course, is all that is needed to get great surround sound."
Actually your description is not a qualifier. It depends which mid priced receiver. The one on my system with the speakers I built to run on it is spooky good for $750. But you can't change the receiver to another brand and expect the same sound. ie. Denon, Onkyo etc.
There is a certain way surround equipment should be setup by the manufacturer or you can forget good sound no matter how much you spend. We live in a software world, the days of the brute force uber faceplate to the rescue solution is over. Smart equipment is slowly creeping in, and taking over. People who build real surround processors don't chat up their WBT connectors and 24/192 UBer DAC's, they point out the processor bank which allows proper speaker setup, room correction and EQ, and other essential setup parameters to be changed to put that unit in your world perfectly in real time.
Software rules, ie your bombs may be bigger but my bombs land EXACTLY where I want them everytime. You lose. :)
"That seems to imply the processor is one of the most important pieces in the chain."
Equal to the importance of the speakers, in many cases.