I already have the speakers for a 7.2 surround plus I will add 4 or 6 atmos at a later stage. Speakers are B&W 683 S2 Fronts, HTM61 S2 Center and 4 booshelves 685 S2, for subs I have 2 JL's D110 - New Yamaha Pre/Pro might be a nice setup for the HT.
I bought the new Marantz AV8805 and paired it with a new McIntosh MC8207 but than I realize that I needed a nice stereo setup which left me with not a lot of cash to spend on those components, so what I did was I returned both the AV8805 and MC8207 which I think was money spent stupidly for surround. I could not tell a difference between my all in one Marantz SR6013 and those two except that the MC8207 was a much powerful amp but for surround was not worth the $6000.
So if I go with the two Yamaha pre/pro components for my HT that would put me at $5000 maybe less with a discount, and would have about $16-17k to spend on pre/pro for my stereo and maybe a nice set of speakers. I could get the new MC462 and a matching pre amp but that would be it, no money to spare for new speakers or get the MC452 used with a used matching preamp which will leave me with about $7-8 for speakers.
I wanna know what else good is out there to check out. Almost all the shops I went to have McIntosh and Audio Research for demo and that's pretty much it. Anything else would be blind buy which I hate to do.