I'm taking a strong liking to this place already...next round's on me!

gonk & Ragnar,

Thanks for the comments.

It's hard to imagine how Arcam arrived at the decision to omit the pre-amp outptus on the AVR250, I assume it's a case of marketing gone mad, figuring this would "encourage" prospective buyers to move up to the AVR300. Bad idea.

I have a set of older model AR speakers with a pair of 310HOs(95dB rated to 35Hz) as mains, AR2C(94dB rated to 45Hz) for center and a pair of 206HOs(91dB rated to 65Hz) bringing up the rear as well as a Paradigm PS1000 sub. The speakers still sound good but are getting a bit long in the tooth. If I were to get new speakers I'd probably go for something in the Paradigm Studio 60/80/100 range. Being in Canada, it's hard to beat Paradigms for value. The ARs don't really need high-wattage as much as high-current clean power. I used to own an H/K AVR30 pro-logic receiver rated at 60wpc/6ohm/40amps that really sounded great with stereo music. Since then I've been through a few DD receivers including newer H/K and NAD models. H/K sure ain't what it used to be. I liked the NAD the best, but had quality problems with two of them, so I moved on to a Cambridge Audio 540R. It's great for HT, but for music something is off. It's great at low to moderate volumes, but anything lounder loses the smoothness.

The 990/7125 combo is out of my price range at the moment, but I'm in no great hurry. I'll just mosey around a bit more and wait for a few more 1070 reviews to come in before making a decision.