What brand of receiver and power should I buy?

[rob_a]

If you are going to go two channel, go Macintosh! they have some nice sounding tube preamp/amp stuff (if your willing to pay a little bit more)

[bjdalton1]

What does:
2 channel mean.
4 ohm and 8 ohm mean

[02audionoob]

What does:
2 channel mean.
4 ohm and 8 ohm mean

2-channel means stereo. There are multi-channel setups for surround sound so stereo is different from those in that it has only two channels.

4 Ohm and 8 Ohm refer to the speaker resistance. Ohm is the electrical unit for resistance. Many speakers are 8 Ohm so the power rating receiver or amp is given with regard to what each channel does with a resistance of 8 Ohms. If the speakers are 4 Ohm, many amps can provide more power, for which the unit is watts. So the number of watts might be considerably higher when the power rating for 4 Ohms is listed.