5 ch. amps--Parasound; Rotel; Marantz

While i am not overtly familiar with the Rotel stuff, the Marantz 700's would be a better choice than the Marantz 500's in my experience.

Something else that you might want to check into is using a two channel amp for the mains with as little sacrifice in quality as you can and then a three ( or more ) channel amp to fill in the rest for HT use. You might even be able to find something within the same product line using this approach. While it may eat up more rack / shelf space, i think that the results would be more inline with what you may be striving for. Sean
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I have a Marantz MM9000 5ch Amp. After a break-in period it is very nice for movies and also good with music. I noticed that someone commented that all things Marantz sounded "BAD"... I think he may have "BAD" ears!!! I'm not saying Marantz is the best, but bad is not even a fair statement. The best thing to do is talk to professional listeners(any quality audio shop)and tell them the type of sound your looking for.

Good luck.

I think you should get a 6 channel AMP from ADA. Their model
PTM-6150 get high appraise from Home Theater Magazine and other Bristish magazine. It get the same rating as Bryston 9B in Bristish magazine. Its street price can be under $2000. You can research this amp in e-coustics.com and manufacturer web site ada-usa.com The six channel amp can power you rear channel (THX-EX) without purchase additional amplifier.

I have also heard the Sherborn 5 channel amp, very nice, it really is an over achiever, you really may want to take a look at it.

Hi Rowidick. Have you considered any of the amps from ATI? I've been using an ATI AT1505 with 5 NHT satellites to good effect. I wouldn't consider my system to be bright, and that may be due in large to the smooth Pioneer front end.

However, this does not double as a music system for me. I wasn't happy with it's musical reproduction, so I ended up building a separate music only setup.

The ATI is plenty powerful, and since you're mostly concerned with HT, this might warrant a look.