Best Audio quality in Home Theatre Reciever? DVD ?

Hi,

I have some experience with Castle speakers, and the wonderful inversions, which ones do you have, and what wood finish? Best, most musical, and very reasonble AV receiver for these speakers is clearly a Cambridge (AZUR), google their web site, I believe places like Audio Advisor sell them sometimes on close-out I think for around $500.00. But if you have the larger ones like 50's or 100's I would buy Cambridges larger receiver. As mentioned above the B&K and Arcams, amoung other are also quite good but will be more expensive, unless used/older. And I believe the British amps will sound a little better with the British speaks anyway. Take that Cal and plug it into the cambridge with a pair of SR luminesense and your speakers and you will sit there with a smile on your face for hours....Good luck and have fun!

Not sure about the differences among the three Wolfson, BBr or Crystal DACs but I am very happy with the Wolfson DACs and ICE power of the Pio Elite AVR.

From your desription of the kind of sound you like, I can only echo the first response - if sound quality is your priority you need to look to Arcam (or B&K). The Castles would mate very well the Arcam.

These are truly high end pieces, built like tanks, last forever and sound great on both music and movies. You won't feel you're giving up anything when listening in music mode. They do all the HT stuff really well too of course (superbly well in fact), but they sound much closer to high end audio separates than they do AV resceivers.

I've owned a Cal player and I've owned Arcam - check out a used AVR300 or AVR350. They are in another universe soundwise from the Denons et al (and I've owned Denon too).

I was looking at an Arcam 350 but told that it is too old to work well with a Blu Ray DVD player----I don't have Blu Ray currently, but told that this is the way one has to go in the future?

Your thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

apparently the avr350 doesn't support hdmi audio, although it has hdmi video switching. this wouldn't be a deal-killer for me--i'm a 2ch music-first guy and generally apathetic about the endless, mind-boggling array of movie sound enhancements--i don't need neo-dolby 26v.3 jumbo-size or whatever to watch "seinfeld". ultimately, it comes down to how you're actually going to use it (no point in getting a ferrari if the only place you drive is downtown tokyo). if, as you state, your main focus is music, and you don't even have blue ray, buy the arcam (or alternatively, save the $$ and get an earlier, non-hdmi version).