How to choose a home theater A/V receiver | Crutchfield

A home theater receiver, or A/V receiver, is the heart of your surround sound system. It's where you plug in your TV and other sources and power your speakers, and it lets you get engaging, impactful sound for your movies, games and TV shows.

Surround sound really adds depth and detail to anything you watch. Whether you're building a basic system or a more intricate one with overhead speakers, a home theater receiver can feed serious power to your speakers, so you can really build a dream system with speakers of your choice.

Finding the right model depends on your setup: how many speakers will you have? How much power do you need? What do you plan to plug into it? On one hand, you don't want to pay for features and channels you don't need, but on the other hand, what if you want to expand in the future? Our expert helps you figure out which home theater receiver will work best for your needs in this short video.

Home A/V receivers can do more than surround sound, too — you can use them to play streaming music, power a CD player, connect to a preamp, even become part of your whole-house system.

0:00 Intro
0:19 What's a home theater receiver for?
0:46 Input considerations
2:05 Connecting to your TV
2:27 How many channels do I need?
3:15 Other considerations
3:42 Recap and contact info

[jerrygeorgopolis]

Excellent advice to make sure you have the ability to add more speakers !

[MohitYadav-ucwc]

Quick question: I just want to know if these speakers will work with the Denon receiver x1800h as a 5.1.2? 2 RP-8060FA II, 2 RP-502S II, 1 RP-504C II, and 1 RP-1400SW. If not that receiver then can you recommend a Denon receiver that would work. Thank you in advance.😅

[daviddavidsonn]

2:40 is that a couch next to the front right speaker? oh no no no...🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
why are you wearing shoes indoors?

[vincentvanstralen]

Hi, I'm also looking to buy a new receiver and wonder what Denon receiver would do the job well: I have a 5.0 setup and will not be expanding this. The speakers I have are 4x Quad 12L2's (6ohm, about 100 RMS) and I have a Quad Center (6ohm, 70 RMS). I'm mainly looking at the Denon x2800h, x3800 and x4800h. If I can save the money to buy a ps5 instead of spending it to overkill that would be great. I will be using the receiver for family movie watching in the living room and puting on music. A response would help me so much, thanks in advance!

[midmassguy]

Hello jay i have a question on HDMI cables hopefully you can recommend one that i have AudioQuest pearl 48 5ft/// Zeskit maya 8k 10k running Yamaha rx-a8a Panasonic ub 9000 Sony a95k i have always used the zeskit maya Uhs 8k/10k i received the AudioQuest pearl 48 5ft as complimentary from AudioQuest. so my question is what should i go with any help will be appreciated