After looking into it further, despite Onkyo offering some nice features and good sound quality I have some serious reservations about the brand. First, the TXNR646 I was looking at doesn’t appear to be able to handle 4Ohm loads, at least in the US, despite seeming to have the power to do so. I’d apparently need to step up to the 747 to handle that kind of load. Their Euro models seem to come with a 4Ohm switch that for some reason isn’t offered here. Very odd and very frustrating. Second, there seem to be a lot of Onkyo customers who have serious problems right out of the box or units that have died after a few years of use. And customer service sounds like it’s absolutely abysmal, although they’re certainly not alone in that. Bad combo though. I tend to keep my equipment for a long time (relatively anyway), so I just can’t get behind a company with all these issues. I also looked at Marantz and would go that route except I’d need to spend 900 bucks to step up to the model that has enough power, which is out of my price range.
So after all this and considering price, performance, features, and reliability, at this point I’m now considering the Yamaha RXV679 despite it possibly being a little underpowered for the speakers I’m considering. It has a little more power than the 479 and adds several nice features for $200 more but is still within my budget max of $600. Since I’ll have a nice sub that I’ll likely crossover at about 80Hz I’m pretty confident it will work fine for my purposes while potentially avoiding some serious pitfalls mentioned earlier. But if there’s another brand that offers what the 679 has with more power and/or a more robust power supply at a similar price I’m absolutely all ears. Thanks for any thoughts.
So after all this and considering price, performance, features, and reliability, at this point I’m now considering the Yamaha RXV679 despite it possibly being a little underpowered for the speakers I’m considering. It has a little more power than the 479 and adds several nice features for $200 more but is still within my budget max of $600. Since I’ll have a nice sub that I’ll likely crossover at about 80Hz I’m pretty confident it will work fine for my purposes while potentially avoiding some serious pitfalls mentioned earlier. But if there’s another brand that offers what the 679 has with more power and/or a more robust power supply at a similar price I’m absolutely all ears. Thanks for any thoughts.