[cupofjoe]

Originally Posted by Baron von Kriterium

Full disclosure: I am not a home theatre wiz having never really enjoyed the surround sound. At any rate, here are some of my comments:

For bi-amping: unless you bypass the speakers' internal crossover, you won't gain anything. Well, maybe a little. But not enough to make it worthwhile.

If you want to go the bi-amp route properly, you will need an electronic crossover between pre-amp and amp. You will need more cables (likely XLR). Ideally, your amps should be the exact same to avoid gain issues. More money, in short.

However, if I read you correctly and your main audio source is streaming audio from WWW, then this is way overkill.

I've read that Marantz HTRs sometimes peg their volume to -6dB for iPod/ Apple TV/internet and the like. Dunno if that is true or not or if that is a glitch in a small quantity.

Regardless of the 7007 specs, I'd still get separate amps. I run a tiny Marantz NR1403 but I have two Parasound HCA 1000s driving the fronts and centre (I only use 3.0 in my home theare set-up). Basically, I'm using the NR1403 as a preamp/processor and nothing else. I do not use it for two-channel stereo; I have a separate set-up for that.

If you want loud and thumping bass, get some Crown XLS 1500 amps. You get a lot of power/$$$ with those amps. I don't know what you paid for the 7007, but you could get an NR1403 and a boat load of power amps for the same dollar amount, I reckon.

+1 to this whole post, well stated.