BudgetAudiophile

I have listened to a lot of nice audio setups, I have spent a lot of time producing and mixing music. I am going to ruffle some feathers here but in my opinion only really two things matter here.

One, record players aren’t the most common input to a receiver anymore so you need to make sure you buy a receiver that is reviewed to have a decent phono input (for record player). It doesn’t need to be super expensive or fancy, the hardware maker just needs to have prioritized that in the product.

Two, the receiver needs to be powerful enough to provide clean power to your speakers. Now again with audiophile stuff people will go and on and on about what kind of preamps or receivers to get because they all have different sounds and tones and I know people want their hobby to have a fancy high end with exclusive luxury items that are superior to budget stuff… but I have seen zero scientific evidence of this (and have never heard a difference).

Maybe 40 years ago there were good preamps and bad preamps in terms of sound quality, but nowadays all that really matters is how much power that preamp has to amplify the signal. Preamps for efficient speakers (like yours) are a solved problem and can just be cranked out of a factory somewhere in Asia no problem 24/7. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the actual hardware in many different brands of audiophile preamps are under the hood actually just the same damn chips you would find in a cheaper product just branded differently. Your speakers are 8ohm bookshelf speakers so you don’t need a massive amount of power, pretty much any receiver will work wonderfully.

In terms of specific models receivers I always buy them used because I am broke and the used market depending on where you live can be full of em. A lot comes down to what kind of connections you want these days. Do you want Spotify on your receiver? Do you want your phone to be able to connect wirelessly?

Brands I particularly like for receivers - marantz, onkyo

Sorry the model names of receivers is a mess of numbers and acronyms and the names are always shifting so I don’t off the top of my head have specific current/new model names I can give you for brand new receivers to get. I will give you a cheap, used secondhand market recommendation though…

For many years I had an Onkyo Tx-8211 from the 90s? that I took from my parents who bought it years ago and didn’t have a stereo system anymore. I listened to all kinds of speakers with it, 4ohm and 8ohm, all kinds of setups and spaces. It sounded great! It can be had for probably easily under $100 used and many people recommend the Onkyo Tx-8211 as a simple, affordable (doesn’t have audiophile branding like other “vintage” brands/eras do) and very high quality receiver with a good phono/record player input.

Check out reviews, they range over decades and they are all really positive.

http://www.audioreview.com/product/amplification/receivers/onkyo/tx-8211.html

Check out this thread detailing some of Onkyo’s other receiver models from a similar time period and you can pick one up for very cheap on the used market likely. Most (if not all?) of these Onkyo’s had decent phono stages too.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/the-onkyo-tx-8xx-series.379243/

I know this might feel like a weird suggestion and no judgement if you want to buy a brand new audiophile branded receiver that is exactly the thing you want for a big chunko change but there is a whole galaxy of these old 90s and 2000s stereo receivers floating around for peanuts on the used market if you have the time to figure out model names and google them with “audiokarma” or “review” added to see if anyone has said anything about them.