In June I planned our new home theater. Decided to use all Naim amplification. Anthem processor appeared to be a good balance between performance and cost. 300 for L & R, my old SN2 for center, another SN2 for rear L & R, and two NAP100s for the four Atmos speakers. Unfortunately Naim discontinued the 100.
Buying an AV processor/receiver doesn’t make sense unless you’re doing at least 5.1. A 3 channel configuration is probably only marginally better than 2 channels. For two channels just buy a good quality stand alone dac. I used my old Berkeley Alpha with optical and it sounded great. They can be found $1.5k. This way it’s electrically isolated from the television and is a legitimate hifi product.
Noticed this thread is pretty old so maybe this is no longer relevant.
apple tv into airplay is resampling everything into 44.1- which is not good for movie soundtracks… I have been trying to avoid this for ages, but I think time has come to look into an AV receiver for my Naim system
let me know what you end up with. Will save me a bunch of research.
I’m just thinking of doing a basic marantz or SR series Sony. What I don’t know is whether the dac improves the more money you pay - or just the ‘wattage’ - which I don’t intend to use.