Quote Originally Posted by TinHere
I love my new receiver. It does everything I need, and has features I don't even use. I bought into a new "gimick" they call YPAO [Yamaha Parametric Acoustic Optimizer] that does a better job than I can in calibration. ... I'm sure some think so, but then again we all make our choices to satisfy our own criteria and what is best for us is decided by each of us.
I think these types of active calibration functions are the next feature that's going to make its way into just about every receiver out there. It makes too much sense to integrate things like delay timing and variable crossover settings with parametric equalization. Just about everyone on this board who's used a parametric EQ on a subwoofer will attest to how critical a difference it made in the overall system performance. This type of feature is not a gimmick because it directly addresses the effect of room acoustics, which IMO is every bit as important as the speaker itself, and a lot more variable than the differences between sources and amplification. Pioneer has had this feature on their Elite receivers for at least the past year, and Harman's research papers stress the importance of room acoustics. With them, I can only assume that the RABOS calibration system that they use with some of their Infinity subwoofers is just the beginning and something similar will show up on h/k receivers soon.

Quote Originally Posted by TinHere
Seperates or receivers? It depends who's asking. I think it's the overkill of speakers in my small room that maginalizes the need to have seperates. I tried a power amp [Parasound 200w] and the only difference I heard was mitigated with turning the volume up on the receiver to play as loud as the amp. No higher highs or deeper bass or quicker transients. Of course you can say that's because the receiver was in the loop. I'm very happy with the processing but most of the listening comparisons were done with "no effect". YMMV. .
Well, I'm kinda in the middle here. I have no doubt that going with separates is a step up. I just don't agree that it's a night and day critical difference, unless you're playing back at concert level volumes or your system has very demanding speakers. Whatever direction you go in, I think it's much more important to first address the room acoustics. With a bad room, the overall audio performance will suffer no matter what amp is used.