AV Receiver good enough for high end audio?

Arcam may be ok for a receiver.It would be nice if they would give you the true power ratings at 20-20k all channels driven.A 80 watt amp is not going to drive a lot of speakers
that fall into the high end category.I don't believe it can give true class A at 30 wpc. Nobody listens to 1 khz only. A telephone does better than that.Arcam link.[http://www.arcam.co.uk/products,fmj,av-amplifiers,AVR600.htm#]Link to test specs.[http://www.hometheatermag.com/receivers/arcam_avr600_av_receiver/index3.html]

Correction for my last post.I should have said,true Class A at 20 watts per channel,all channels driven.Not some form of Class A whatever that is.

10-04-10: Aberyclark
I believe a $500 a/v receiver will sound just as good as a $500 2 channel receiver or amp.

How may can you find that will drive 4 ohm speakers.A lot of mid-fi,and high end speakers are 4 ohms.

Artmaltman

My Theta Casablanca III was the best that I could find when I got into HT.
As good as it is, it's not even close to my 2 channel set up.
So my answer to you is no.

Take care,

I've had a fair number of higher end receivers (excuse the oxymoron), and in all cases found they performed better as preamps* than amps. Always found a not-subtle improvement when using an outboard dedicated amp (regardless of speaker character/efficiency, but certainly more pronounced with demanding loads), and varying degrees of more subtle improvement when using outboard preamp and HT passthru. The nice thing is that it provides a nice incremental upgrade path if you are so inclined.

*Excepting for the phono preamp if it happens to be built-in, which are universally pretty lousy.