@ghdprentice for me, I’ve always found (at least in surround sound), that a good receiver can make crappy speakers sound better than good speakers can make a crappy surround sound receiver sound. I had a Denon 3805 receiver many years ago. To bring in HDMI, I “upgraded” to a Pioneer Elite, and it was a downgrade in sound quality big time! Night and day difference! Going from the Pioneer Elite receiver (it was I think a $2800 receiver) to the Denon 4520ci was like going from a Pinto to a Ferrari. I was sooo unimpressed with the Pioneer Elite series. Especially the mid levels. Felt hollow to me.
That said, both receivers are designed with a focus on Surround Sound rather than Stereo Sound. My problem is that I will be using these speakers for my left and right channel of my surround sound system as well as my stereo setup, so I still want to keep a focus on surround sound, while stilL utilizing these to as much of their full potential as I can in stereo mode.
Eventually, I could get a more powerful preamp to power these speakers, but I don’t know that it’s needed. Being electrostatic, the real power hungry part is the subs. The speakers themselves I don’t think take nearly as much power (though I may be wrong). And in that case, once I get a replacement subwoofer so I have a full 5.1, the subwoofer can make up for any lacking that there may be by only pushing 140-160w into ea instead of their top rated 400.
I love the sound of tube amps, but any kind of audiophile surround sound receiver I’ve come across, has been a pile of junk. From McIntosh to Acam, they just seem to break far too often. It’s sad as it feels like they spend so much on nice tube amps built in, and then sacrifice on software and chip quality. I can’t count how many customers I’ve had to pull these receivers from and send in repairs for them to wait up to 2 months to get it back, reinstall and have the same problem, or another new problem. Or maybe it works fine, and a month later they call us because something stopped working again. It’s hard to sell a product when you can’t believe in its reliability!
