Right now I have access to 15% off Yamaha, Sony ES or NAD receivers. That is the brands this small store sells. They also have a 20% off speakers sale which brands are Paradigm and Definitive Technology. The funny thing is that the store employees seem to favor the sound of Sony ES receivers which scares me.
I am strongly considering the Yamaha 657 receiver which I can get for $425. I don!t like the idea of buying refurbs because of past experience and I want to keep the price as low as possible while keeping the performance decent.
I am considering the ProCinema 80 ($800) or ProCinema 100 ($1080) Def Tech speakers to go along with the Yamaha 657. Another receiver I had considered was the Pioneer 1015TX but it is more than the Yamaha and I think less features. The review I saw for thePioneer claimed really great sound for movies and music. I am not so sure I could get anything better than the Yamaha at that price without going for a refurb or open box. This is going to be in a small room approximately 10 1/2 by 10. I am going to wall mount the speakers. My goal is to get reasonably good sound while keeping the cost and speaker size down. My other speaker choice although I have not yet heard them would probably be Orb Audio as they along with Def Tech have great customer service. I will mostly be watching movies but I do like good sounding music.
Is there other receivers and speaker combinations that I should be looking at within the same price range? I realize I am going to be dealing with limitations because of price and speaker sizes involved. I like dynamic sound on movies but I do not like really bright sound.
A qyestion I have is that I believe on a review of the Yamaha 2500 claimed something about not sup output on music or something like that. Is that the same with the Yamaha 657?