Recievers versus separates

First, I'm still on the "jouney", so not all of this is first hand, and you can accept or reject accordingly. The claim is oft made that they can/will outperform separates at a similar (combined, including interconnects) price point. And frequently some multiple is claimed ("...performs better than separates at up to twice it's price"...). I can understand and pretty much accept the former, not so sure about the more extravagant claims. Have heard a number of people upgrade to an outboard amp and still use receiver as pre/pro, and claim very noticeable improvement. I've done this bit with a mid-fi receiver, and a much better (but still mid-fi) receiver, and a good quality amp that costs as much as the better receiver (one-half of separates at twice the price, so to speak). There IS a very noticeable improvement with the outboard amp, although less so over the better receiver. Insofar as the amps go, I believe it has a lot to do with how easy is your speaker load, and do you have multi-channel demands, and the amp design of the receiver.

I just have a hard time rationalizing putting $3k or $4k into a super-receiver, when so much of it is now in a/v technology that will be superceded if not obsolete in a year. Great amps are great amps forever. Once I got over some $ threshold, I'd put my money in long-term amplification, and buy "disposable" pre/pro's. YMMV.

It isn't as good as my current setup, an Arcam Alpha 10 Integrated Amp. and a Denon AVR-3300 working in a combined system. I paid $1850 for the new B&K when they lowered the price last year(list was $2850). I bought the Arcam and Denon used for $850 and $400. IMHO, this $1250 setup is significantly better for music and is as good for HT. Also, I found the B&K cumbersome to use. The B&K was beautiful and well built, but I didn't like the ergonomics and I did return it after 2 weeks.

I really like my "combined" system and would challenge any $1250 HT receiver to be as musical. It is perfectly suficient for HT too. Once set up, and using a good learning remote with macros, it is just as user friendly as a stand-alone receiver too.

Just my $.02 worth.

TIC

I don't have direct experience with all of the pieces you mention, but I can comment about the "good as separates" claim. Its no trick to build similar circuitry into one box as opposed to two, and many better receiver manufacturers do exactly this. However, there are some important pitfalls to single box design that are difficult to overcome. Typically, a receiver will use a single power supply to drive both channels, instead of individual supplies for each channel. Splitting the power generally means providing less to each channel, so the each side sweats a bit more when the amp is driven hard (which doesn't necessarily mean loud -- transients in the music at normal volumes are a strain on the amp). Bigger is nearly always better when it come to power supplies. Secondly, a single box design will suffer from crosstalk between the channels, which is a source of distortion and reduces separation by some degree. The technical issues here have long since drifted from memory and I could be wrong here, so perhaps some of the more knowledgeable folks can step in to correct me on this.

All that said, there is no reason that a great receiver can't be produced (and many have been), but the claim that is as good as separates is likely to be more of a marketing issue than it is an audio or technical one. Putting the same circuitry into separate boxes will nearly always show benefits. As for comparing apples to oranges (Bryston separates to a Denon receiver for example), folks are free to say whatever they want -- its entirely subjective.

Cheers,
Ken