If you are going to bring in speaker power requirements into perspective, then you need to look at what cross over point you are planning to run the speakers at.
Set them at 100hz you will need significantly less power of the receiver than if you try to run them at 40-50hz.
But I have also questioned why a pre amp costs the amount that it does. There must be other parts savings inside the units that bring the cost of a receiver down other than supply and demand quantity adjustments.
Yep, very relevant point about the crossover. Probably 80 Hz, but might like to toy around a bit. You must be right about the costs of a pre. It is a "premium" product, with a different, smaller market base, as you noted. But there must certainly be a real parts premium as well, and also vitally an engineering and design cost component too. Diminishing returns, as usual. The tech changes so fast that one expects to upgrade processors more frequently than the comparative stability of amps and speakers, the latter justifiably taking the lions share of budgeting. For this generation, a receiver, and an older model at that, is the cost-viable path, even though separates really speak to my sensibilities on division of function.
I'd pick the 'heavier' one, ha!
TAM
Hard to argue with that!
