Charles, in the overwhelming majority of cases a receiver is the sensible, cost-effective purchase. There's no inherent magic in using two or three boxes instead of one and it'll generally cost more for the same results. As always, what's needed for transparent amplification is flat frequency response from 20-20KHz and inaudibly low noise and distortion. Although you haven't mentioned what you're considering(or exactly what you mean by "boost"), HK and others have stereo receivers which do this at quite low cost.
