Onkyo TX-RZ50 Black

I did a lot of research before choosing this product. I would have had to spend almost twice as much to get something better. The connectivity is great, especially the Chromecast built in which means I can play any media (audio or video) directly from my phone. For the moment it is still set up with some old speakers as surround speakers but the DIRAC software was able to correct their quite terrible frequency response. Be aware that DIRAC is incompatible with the HDMI CEC, you will need to turn off the option (in HDMI settings) temporarily to run it - this was annoying Once setup, I did some extensive tests. The DIRAC settings correct the frequency response to being completely flat, but for me that was very bright (to much volume in the high frequencies), otherwise it sounds fantastic. I got the volume to about 92 out of 100 and there was still no distortion though it was already much too loud for me. At this level there was a lot of hiss when there was no music. This disappears at normal listening levels (up to about level 70).

I have a NAS with all my music on it and went to the Music server App under the "NET" option. Here you also find Spotify and other apps. The Music server does not have a graphical user interface and scrolling through all of the artists is VERY slow. It was quicker to use the Folder method (I was careful to set up a clean folder system for my music). I was able to select "Albums" folder then "Artists C-E" then "Dire Straights" then "Love over Gold" to find the track I wanted to play, which was much quicker. In practice I will use my phone for the navigation and then simply cast to the device so this is not such a big problem.

If you are a true audiophile there are better options at (much) bigger prices but for most of this I suspect that this is the best price-performance ratio you will find.