But as it stands I've had to leave the Axiom eco-system for a component and now I'm looking at other vendors. They have amps too... and wouldn't it be nice if the Amp and the PP matched?
They used to sell another company's receivers back in the day. Was it Sherwood? This was before they offered their own amps, so there was no matching to worry about, and it was just a way to--like you want--keep it one simple transaction. I was personally never tempted because I was looking at other features at the time.
I'm considering getting an Anthem AV processor, but I could never justify the cost of their amplifiers. So much more bang for the buck with Axiom. I can't see that their black box is that much more attractive than Axiom's.
Years back, I did consider Emotiva. I owned an amp by them, but I didn't feel like I was getting that much more than I was getting out of my receiver. When I was looking at a pre-pro, I entertained the idea, but it seemed like their product was ever fully-baked, so I gave up on the idea. I'm not sure where they stand now. I'm a little wary of smaller, less-established companies trying to do sophisticated electronics. Even Oppo, which had a stellar name, fell short of my expectations. I regularly had issues playing Blu-rays, as they weren't nearly as fast updating their code as Sony with their PS3, so I would invariably need to use that as my player.
I wouldn't want to see Axiom get into that space, at least not without a sizable team dedicated just to that product line.
One thing I would like to see for the industry is speaker profiles that can be loaded onto your receiver that could take the place of any outboard DSP control. It would be cool to have an open standard that allows every loudspeaker manufacturer to tailor the performance of each of their speakers electronically, without them having to release their own product to do it.
