I am reassembling my home theater after some water damage destroyed my basement. At risk of wearing out those who are more knowledgeable than I, I would like some advice on receivers. My main criteria is that is has to be purchased from amazon since I have $550 in gift money sitting there. Currently, I have the onkyo 705 in my cart, but have read that onkyo may not play well with M2 or M3 (choices for front speakers). Is that true? If you have any other recommendations for recievers for less than $700 from amazon, I would appreciate it. Also, are M2 or M3 better when paired with new T2?

All solid state receivers should be designed to be sonicly flat from 20hz to 20khz by design, so there would be no reason to believe the Onkyo would not perform like any other decent AVR on the market with similar specs.

The only speaker in the Axiom line up that has had issues with certain receivers in the "past", was the m80's. Even then, any receiver can drive the m80's, it is just a question of how loud before the receiver might possible go into protection mode when driving the 4 ohm speakers.

There is no reason to believe any receiver would have issues with the m2's.

Crabbity I have a onkyo 605 that drives my M22's, QS8's and VP100, I don't think that a 705 should have any problems driving the speakers you had in mind for it at all

+1. I think the 705 is a really good value right now.

Thanks for the insight. I'm not well versed in the subtleties of audio equipment being a mere computer nerd.

I think I will pull the trigger tonight.

many of us are IT pencil pouch carrying geeks. We like Audio as well.

Crabbi, welcome. You should disregard what you read about Onkyos with Axioms, because it's pure nonsense. It may also be good reason for you to view with suspicion any "advice" you read from those sources in the future.

If the Onkyo 705 has all the feature and connectivity you desire, it will work well with the speakers you mentioned.

I get a pencil pouch now that I'm in IT?? Cool!