Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions B&K Receiver for M80's

I agree with Alan. I have listened to B&K AVRs on very large and supposedly hard to drive speakers (Wilson Watt Puppy and the BIG Martin Logans) and came away very impressed as they have tons of power and run fine at 4 ohms. While JohnK is surely right about not needing more power than a "cheap" AVR can make, many of us find the real world experience of adding a better power section pays dividends that can't be explained by the math until you turn it up past the 90db range and factor in the kinds of 30db peaks Alan mentions. I would take the B&K amp section over the Denon every time - and I am a big Denon fan and owner. Moving up to a separate amp (i.e.., more robust, more powerful) improved the sound in my system over my Denon AVR 3300. I expect the B&K would do the same.

Also, I am living with a similar geriatric system setup to what you are describing - no HDMI, no Audy, no TrueHD, etc. I planned to buy the Denon 4310 after the projector purchase was done. But after extended listening and watching (over 700 hrs since May 1) the only feature I wish I had was voice delay.

My (all) projector(s) has a bit of a lag that I would love to fix. My point is, I would not buy the refurb or cheap Denon in order to get those features if you can get a B&K amp section. As long as the B&K can be used as a separate amp later (need pre-ins) I would go that route and upgrade the decoder section later. That technology gets cheaper every day, and as you said, and outboard decoder cure much of your concern.