Quote Originally Posted by blackraven
I heard that Yamaha 1800 for music and it sounded pretty good. It compared well with the Denon 1910 that I have which is a pretty good cd player as well as a dvd player. For $75 its a great buy for a budget system.

I would still consider the HK receiver over the Onkyo. Its got preamp, phono preamp and sub outs. It also puts out high current with I believe 45 peak amps. It tends to have a slightly warmer sound which IMO would be better for budget speakers which tend to be bright. But either way you go you will have a decent 2ch receiver. And I agree that a receiver should be rated at least 20-20.

Good Luck!
Thanks man, appreciate the input again. Glad to hear the Yamaha sounds good. The Onkyo has a Phono input and sub output too, and I think pre amps as well, check out this photo to see if I'm wrong: http://www.crutchfield.com/App/Produ...0TX8555&tp=179

I trust the Onkyo to be more reliable than the HK, old prejudices perhaps. My goal would be to upgrade to a better integrated amp in a couplle of years. I had a Roksan Kandy integrated amp and cd player some time ago. Nice stuff, but frankly I didn't think it was worth the price of what they cost new (I got it used on Audiogon). So the budget stuff I'm looking at now, will suffice for a while. And ANYTHING is better than what I have now, I gotta remember that.

So I've down this system I think, to everything but the speakers. The Mordaunt Short 902 seem classy, the Polk Monitor 40 are a great buy, the Boston Acoustics seem good too, it will probably be a gamble to see what works best. The advantage of a more familiar name brand like the Polk or BA is that I could flip it quickly on CL.

I have some boutique guitar gear I'm trying to sell that isn't that well known, and it's hard to sell. So the Mordaunt Short could be at a disadvantage here, but they seem more "audiophile" than the other contenders here, so they're high on my list too. I gotta try and see what's available locally on Friday.