Oooh! Wilsonart laminate # 546, "Taken for Granite" in Shoreline Beige! I use it in all my promo shots !

You no likee little dot?

I like the receiver John linked to with some M3s and the Hsu STF-1 for under 1K

I use a Little Dot MKIII to power my headphones with. I have never used the preamp section on it and I do have a pair of M3's just sitting around.

I also have a spare receiver but I don't think I can hook up the MKIII to that.

The receiver johnK linked says HDMI 1.3 (video only). Does that mean you still have to run a optical or coax audio cable to the receiver from any components for sound, or is that just if you wanted to pass sound thru to your TV from an HDMI out if you weren't using external speakers?

Yes, you are correct. There are some entry level Denon models that will pass only video through HDMI. Not sure how old this model is but it was common with some of their entry models around 2-3 years ago.

If you are using HDMI through this receiver you will have to run a separate audio cable (toslink/coax) for sound. In the case of Blu-ray if you want to use the lossless audio that this format supports you will need a Blu-ray player with multi-channel analog outputs and processes these codecs internally.

Dr. House you are correct ... l'il dot cannot drive m3s. L'il dot would make an excellent though limited preamp.

Dr. H ... if you grab one of those muse 2024 $25 amps for your l'il dot and your m3s you could confirm whether the combo has the magic.

Where would you recommend purchasing that amp?

Personally, I would steer clear from any receiver that doesn't allow sound through the HDMI inputs.