Mike is going to wait until the new Denon blows up ... next week.

Richard.... Go join your other smartassed siglings in Time-out! And I'm taking all your SRV CD's away for two weeks.

It will be nice when Mikey compares the Axiom amp to the Rotel

Be sure to post pics Mike ... pictures are good.

OK… You too Ricky. Go join the other brats and I’m locking the room with Bose Cubes all around out of reach and the Carpenters playing all day.

Dang Mike, that's right down Wid's alley ... I'd throw on some rap, that would really do him in. I bet it would sound great on that honkerin' Bose sub.

There is much going for receivers as an all in one box solution. I have several but they compromise sound quality in one way or another.

For people into fidelity, separates especially a quality amp offers an optimal way to get better performance from the rest of your gear.

I doubt the A1400-A is targeted at buyers of receivers since a receiver in essence represents a cheaper all in one box compromise. This amp will appeal to people who have gone or are thinking of upgrading to separates.

Based on its performance, it belongs in the same category of the big solid state amps by Krell, Classe, Bryston, McIntosh, and others. If you compare its pricing to those other high performance amps, the price of the Axiom amp looks pretty favourable. It doesn't make much sense to look at the A1400-8 as a product designed to compete with a cheap compromised receiver solution. This product is not for receiver consumers.

I look toward reveivers more as an alternative to a pre-amp which is where their cutting edge feature sets have an advantage. On more than one occasion I have used receiver pre-outs into a separate amp to by-pass the inferior amps found many receivers.

Then I shouldn't inform you it is only $334/mth or does that make it easier.

It's getting crowded here in "time out".

The Amp Envy is starting to get to me.

Okay, I do have a question about implementation of the PROCESSOR part of that equation, though.

I perceive that there are NOT many affordable, robust pre-amps being marketed, especially compared to the feature sets being delivered in even mid-priced receivers. The newer receivers regularly mentioned around here (Denon, Onkyo, others) are VERY full-featured processors that also happen to include an amplifier section in which we may or may not be interested.

Now, conventional upgrade path wisdom is that a person could use one of these full-featured receivers as a pre-pro with one of these wonderful amps. That makes sense to me. However, simply not using the amps in the receiver doesn't remove them from the receiver chassis. Typically, the physical separation of the processor from the amplifier is cited as an important component of cleaning up the signal path and hearing the angels' wings beat.

So, for you engineer types, does simply NOT USING the amplifier in the receiver meaningfully (audibly?) diminish the amount of electro-wavy interference introduced to the signal path, or is it really in fact necessary to get a dedicated, amplifier-free processor in order to reap the benefits of sonic bliss?

If somebody at least understands what I'm flailing around at, please chime in.

If someone actually says their A1400 amp somehow put them on the moon i'm really going to type alot.