Now look, I know everyone here has something here to say about how crappy Bose is, but the fact remains that I have the speakers and need a good midrange receiver to go with them. Could someone let me know the best one for a 6.1 setup that costs between $200-400. Thanks.
Bose is over marketed, over hyped garbage. It is phisically impossible for a one way driver to properly produce accurate mid range and high end signals at the same time, yet thats what the acustacrap system claims to do. The quality of materials that go into building a Bose speaker are very poor. Bose has brainwashed you into thinking that their lousy sound with no dynamic range is really wonderful. How did they do it? Well a massive advertising budget helps. Not only that but they ripped you off with those outrageous prices that they charge. Dont believe the hype. Bose stands for "Better Off with Something Else"
I have a Yamaha RXV-2500 A/V Receiver with Paradigm Monitor 11 Front speakers. The Center, Surround and Presense speaker outputs are connected to a Bose Accustimass 15 system. The Yamaha also allows Surruond Back speakers but not both Surround Back and Presence at the same time so it is up to your own taste and room setup.
The Yamaha YPAO does a good job of equalizing the speakers in Auto Flat mode. The resulting graphs show the Paradigms are almost perfectly flat! The Bose on the other hand are all over the place!
Interestingly, it showed the Left Surround speaker was out of phase. I reversed the connection at the receiver with no change. I reversed the connection at the speaker and it was happy. Bose must be doing something within the Base Module or the wiring is mislabeled.
A little known fact: The Bose Accoustimass is a 6 ohm system. I'm using a DBX BX2 power amp to bi-amp the Paradigms. The Bose are connected to the Yamaha so I set the Yamaha to 6 ohms.
I located the Accoustimas Base Module in the rear of the room. YPAO set all speakers to Large with base going to the front speakers (No subwoofer). I manually set the Center speaker to small to reduce an annoying boom sound coming from the rear. The result is not perfect but acceptable.
I brought home a Paradigm CC-370 Center Channel to audition. My wife didn't even let me take it out of the box! "Sounds fine", she said. "Take it back"!