AV Receiver good enough for high end audio?

If you purchased a high end A/V receiver, I'm sure you would have to get into a much more pricey 2 channel system to hear an improvement. In fact, I'm willing to bet that other components in your system would provide the weaker link before the high end receiver (unless you have ultra high end speakers, transports, etc)

I have an older Elite 7.1 A/V receiver. I now only listen to 2 channel. I considered going with a $1,000 or so integrated amp and some new speakers ($1200 or so for a bookshelf sized pair. I would have to probably shell out closer to $2000 for an integrated to start to hear a major QUALITY difference to justify the purchase(I'm not talking bias characteristics like warm, tubey etc). I decided to place the money all in the speakers first and worry about the amp later.

I believe a $500 a/v receiver will sound just as good as a $500 2 channel receiver or amp.

I always thought all the preamp features is what made a/v receivers less desirable