HIGHLY COMMENDED:

Given the common parentage under Sound United, it’s no surprise to find Marantz moving alongside Denon into this new super-receiver category. The $5740 SR8012 offers 11 very respectable channels of 140W into eight ohms, all channels also supporting four ohms, and enormous flexibility (instead of 7.2.4 you could for example use the amps to biamp every speaker in a 5.1-channel set-up). You get eight HDMI inputs, Dolby Vision HDR, Auro-3D, and despite its potential complexity, one of our favourite activities was to select 2-channel playback for stereo music - we reckon it would take a very golden ear to realise from the sound that this is an AV receiver not a high-quality stereo amplifier. And again, HEOS streaming and multiroom brings endless additional abilities (see the Denon review). Can you plug in your turntable? Of course you can! This is a receiver with the lot. www.marantz.com.au