HELP CHOOSING A RECEIVER

Hi. I just replaced my Rotel 1056 with a Marantz 6006 that i found as an open box special at Best Buy. I'm running a 5.1 system on 8 year old B&W 602 fronts, 601 surrounds, center and sub. I am really happy with the Marantz so far. The Audyssey room correction has really improved the intelligibility of dialog in movies and TV as well as given more clarity and "presence" for ambient sounds. As far as music goes, the sound is more balanced with better articulation of the bass in 2.1 and 5.1 listening. The Marantz sound is a little less warm than the Rotel to my ears, but it is not at all cold or clinical sounding. I am very happy so far with the Marantz sound improvements for both HT and music. I don't know how much of this to attribute to the Audyssey room correction vs. tonality that is inherent to the Marantz receiver itself, though, so it is very possible that any receiver in this range with similar room correction would give similar results. The HDMI switching and network features (Airplay, internet radio) were easy to set up and work well. I am very happy with the Marantz 6006.

Hope this helps!
Mandomoose

In addition to the Marantz 6006 or newer 6007, the Denon 2113CI (or one of last year's "CI" models on clearance) would also be a good match.

You've gotten some pretty good advice already.

If money were not a big issue would look fist for an AVR from a mainstream company (Yamaha, Onkyo, Marantz, Pioneer, etc) that has Audyssey Multieq XT32 system tuning software.

Marantz and Denon are good mainstream brands. So is Harman Kardon.

To me choosing a product because "it doesn't get hot" makes no sense.

Any receiver that is required to drive speakers hard is going to get hot. The biggest heat sinks in the world and the largest power transformers can't violate the laws of physics.If there is naturally heat to dissipate, and you trap it inside a poorly-designed cabinet, the component dissipating that heat is going to get hot. Almost every AVR on the market has a class AB output stage and its heat versus power dissipation is going to be about the same.

Show me a receiver that gets too hot and I will show you a receiver that is not getting the ventillation that any other reciever in the same circumstance would need.

The exception would be AVRs with swtichmode power supplies and output stages such as the new Harman Kardon AVR 1800 and Pioneer SC series,

I suggested them as additional options for you only. Also, note that one of the main heat sources on an AVR is the video card, so if video upscaling is not a requirement for you, choose a model without a video card and it will generally run much cooler if that is important to you, although even on the models with video cards, providing at least 3-4" clearance all around the unit is generally sufficient. If the unit is placed inside a cabinet shelf, then installing a small PC fan to exhaust the hot air will generally resolve any possible heat related issues.