Well I guess that makes me a good guesser then as I had no experience with Denon what-so-ever before I purchased the 4802. My previous receiver was a VERY cheap Sony (you know, the kind of receivers that came in one of those $500 dollar stacks comprised of a receiver, a dual tape deck, a cd player and two speakers... yeah that was my first foray into Hi-fi). After hooking it up to my 36 inch Toshiba and purchasing my first DVD player I was hooked on the concept of Home Theater... but didn't have any money to purchase anything better. So after a few years at my job, and a few raises later, I FINALLY was ready to make an attempt at putting a more serious Home Theater System together.
Initially I was planning on upgrading to a better Sony unit. My initial spending limit was $1000 dollars. But as I started to investigate pricing, and started doing serious comparisons with high-end receivers, Sony quickly faded into the background and Yamaha, Pioneer and Denon started to stand out. Then my price limit started to give me grief... the more I read about the higher end features, the less and less desirable the $1000 and under crowd became to me. So after much debate I found an AVR-4802 at the rock bottom price of just $1700 dollars (this was about 4 years ago mind you), and I just couldn't pass it up with all the features it had compared to anything else in that price range.
In order to pay the extra money for the receiver I had to buy some very modest towers. I bought a pair of $650 dollar Cerwin Vega's, and a decent Cerwin Vega center. The Cambridge Soundwork surrounds were very nice though, and the down firing 220 watt Cerwin Vega sub placed directly behind the couch also did a fairly nice job for the money. All of that coupled with the (at the time) top of the line Toshiba 65 inch projection HDTV (LCD wasn't on the map yet, and only Bill Gates could afford the Plasma's at that time), and I had a grand total of around $7000 wrapped up in my movie room. It was very amaturish at best, but the kids still loved it, as did my football buddies.
But it's been a few years, and my budget has grown even more now. So what on earth else would I do... but go out and upgrade my Home Theater System again, right? Naturally, it's man law after all.
So knowing that my speakers were my weak-link, that is where I began. And having narrowed it down to two Canadian (it's purely coincidental that I too am Canadian I assure you) brands, Paradigm and Axiom, I came to the conclusion that my swollen budget is still shy of the total cost of a 'Top of the Line' Paradigm surround system. And while I'm sure their line of speakers that are comparable to the Axiom Epic 80 systems probably sound beautiful, I guess I'd rather have a company's flagship product over another company's middle of the road product... like I said, I'm strange sometimes.
So I'm hoping this guess will go as well as my Denon guess went, as I also have absolutely no experience with Axiom speakers what-so-ever before this purchase. The 4802 is sticking around as it is still a worthy anchor for my system. But the Toshiba is also getting replaced by a Sharp 65 inch Aquos LCD tv. A friend of mine has a 42 inch Sharp LCD that is just stunning to watch. So I'm really excited to see what the upgraded tv will look like in conjunction with the upgraded sound system. It feels like christmas!
