Best multi channel amp and processor good for 2 channel listening.

That SP4 doesn’t even support Dolby Vision so I wouldn’t wanna buy a product that costs that much and is already outdated; also, $14K to just be a DAC and amplify the line-level connection(s) is a bit much, adding some high end subs (dual Rythmik G25HP for instance, AVS Forums “Top Pick” for 2018) and room treatment if you don’t already have would be far more worth your money.

You also want room correction, so I would consider:

* Marantz 8805, ~$4500 MSRP, would recommend the $20 app to edit the Audyssey curve, as it employs something similar to the BBC Dip. Super high quality analog outputs and equally high end AKM DACs.

* Anthem AV60, $3000 MSRP, it’s room correction is said to be better than Audyssey. The Marantz is more for a few reason, one is 13ch processing, which is the cheapest 13ch professor on the market (the Bryston is 15ch, so you are paying probably an $8000 premium just for that), but since you aren’t doing that, the Anthem may be better, except I don’t know the quality of the DAC (and it’s internal analog section may not be clean enough to allow an external DAC to be better).

* Arcam AV860, ~$5500 MSRP, it has Dirac which is said to be top tier in room correction (which is what the Bryston has as well). It’s DAC section is also pretty good.

For amplification, how many channels, and do you want a single unit?

@maguiar

All modern B&W speakers are bright (their 10000Hz peaks are well known and documented), so it was the speakers not the processor.

Bryston and Benchmark make excellent 2ch amps, being “fast” has nothing to do with sound quality being bright or warm, they are both neutral (John Atkinson of Stereophile had to call up for help in order to accurately measure the Benchmark, as his test equipment couldn’t keep up).  
  
Still excellent, but cheaper, are the ATI amps utilizing Hypex. ATI is a very well respected American amplifier company, they are not as popular though, but they are so good that other brands actually have ATI design the amps for them, like the Monolith amps (which are excellent for the relatively cheap price) is designed by ATI.

@maguir 
 
Don’t worry a single second about using something like the Marantz as your processor, it’s DAC is high quality and it’s pre-outs are high voltage and low distortion. Not really gonna gain any real benefit from using an audiophile grade stereo pre-amp/DAC. 
 
Since you seem to want a 2ch setup plus your surround setup, the way you would have this wired is having the 2ch setup as Zone 2 (you lose any room correction though). I would test out the speakers as the main left/right for the surround sound as well, as that would simplify things, and even though the center may not be timbre matched, it’s not as big of a deal as people make it out to be, I’ve seen many people’s setups where they use a different brand for the center as their main speakers don’t have a matching one, and they can’t tell there is any mismatch.

Belles: Never heard of them, but quick research shows good performance at reasonable prices.

Sim/Moon: Good performance but overpriced, same category as Boulder. Also, they focus on the wrong things, selling a >800W power amp for $42K is just dumb, there are hardly any speakers that don’t distort/clip when fed 200W (some speakers claim they can, but it’s just marketing unless DSP is in the picture).

McCormack: Decent performance at reasonable prices.

@maguiar

What integrated amp are you talking about? The setup is simple, surround sound is Zone 1 from the processor and 2ch setup is Zone 2, this is a super simple feature something like the Marantz has.

Power the surround sound speakers with anything you like, not sure how many channels you have, but the Monolith amps I mentioned is only $1600 for 7ch.

For the 2ch speakers, again use whatever amps you want; measurements of a Bryston amp, I would like @auxinput to state where exactly it is thin/bright, as you can see it is a completely accurate amp.

Bryston, Benchmark, ATI, PS Audio and Arcam all offer stereo amps that perform excellently but aren’t ridiculously overpriced (like Boulder amps, good performance but stupidly marked up).

@auxinput

That is because the slew is so fast, that it is not letting the amp continue to translate the DAC square step waveforms into true analog waveforms

Squarewave measurements are common in tests, this is done for every Stereophile amp measurement for instance.

I get what you are saying, and since the room is an unknown factor I always recommend home trials (meaning being able to return the product for free or just return shipping, no $50 restocking fee or any of that nonsense).

There are more to DAC measurements than just a flat frequency response. There is THD, IMD, noise floor, volume linearity (if it has volume controls), channel mismatch, channel crosstalk, etc.