Yeah - was waiting for you
Mid 2000's gear is great (before HDMI set in). Best part is it is cheap. Nice pics.
These are mostly what I see.
The pre-HDMI, and early HDMI.
So cheap that flipping them is difficult .
With HDMI and 4K upgrades, I see a lot of these being retired by high end AV installers.
I end up with so many that I now have to scrap working units.
I didn't even bother to test many of the last two pallets full. I just scraped them.
I get mostly Denon and Yamaha.
FWIW, the Yamaha with phono would be excellent for that.
Yamaha natural sound works very well for me for phono.
I've never tried phono much on the AVR stuff but would expect great results.
My issue with the AVR sound performance is that the sound is too clean, clear, clinical.
Too crisp, sharp, edgy. It seems like something is missing. The old cap coupled vintage gear sounds better to me and cap coupling should be less accurate and crisp and clean by nature. So it may be completely a personal preference.
I can tell immediately when I switch from the newer stuff to the 70s vintage.
The warm, soft, fuzzy sound that has some soul to it is instantly obvious.
But, if this thread is about vintage AVR, then, yes, mid 2000, pre HDMI was still mostly analog and discrete component and built well. The remote standby system and digital interface and display and menu systems I don't care for, but the main power supply and amp systems are quite nice.