AVR = Movies, Stereo = Music

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Most of the forum members know what my opinion is of using AVRs for stereo music and I could once again upset some AVR owners.
However, it is not my intention to upset AVR owners, but rather to convey my experieces in this regard. Maybe just to justify, I have had the follwoing AVRs in the past: Yamaha RX-V450, Yamaha RX-V650, Cambridge Audio 540R and base my opinion on those as well as the current AVR.

As mentioned in the Classifieds, I bought 2nd hand pair of bookshelf speakers(Mordaunt-Short MS3.10) to use with the Yamaha RX-V361 I have for TV viewing and the occasional movie.

After connecting the speakers, I tried to listen to a CD and there was no focus, hardly any soundstage and an overall "fuzziness" to the presentation. Then I put in a DVD containing some music and this sounded quite acceptable with a wide soundstage and good focus.

The next step was to connect the speakers to my stereo setup and for a pair of speakers almost 20 years old, they sounded very good and I could hear why many people prefer bookshelf(or standmount) speakers to floorstanders. The MS speakers did not sound better than the Curas I normally use, but the difference between music in this configuration compared to stereo mode on the Yamaha was HUGE. Sort of contemplating whether I should try and get a home demo of something like a pair of B&W 905's. ;)

I know that not all AVRs are created equally and there are some that sound pretty good in a stereo environment(Cambride Audio, NAD  and Marantz come to mind), but IMHO a moderate stereo setup will always sound better in stereo than an AVR setup at even up to a price difference of 1 to 2(say R10,000 stereo setup vs R20,000 AVR setup)

Offcourse there are many other benefits to using an AVR, such as video upscaling, multi-room capability, switching unit and not least, enjoying movie sound effects.

Any person starting off in this hobby needs to ask him/herself the following questions:

1. Do I needs acceptable stereo music reproduction or will an AVR suffice?
2. Do I need switching for multiple inputs to a single device?
3. Do I need video upscaling?
4. Do I need multi-room capability?

There are probably many more questions that will be raised, but lets put it out there and see what pops up. ;D
 
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