It smokes any other receiver here, beating out competing models from Sony and Yamaha easily. It truly is one of the finest receivers we’ve ever tested, impressing us with hard-hitting, muscular sound. In our opinion, anybody looking to buy the absolute best overall AV receiver for the money needs to buy a Denon-and in particular, the AVR-S960H. What We Don't: There’s no Chromecast, and the HEOS app can be annoying. What We Like: Powerful, muscular sound matched with terrific features. Wattage Per Channel: 90/8Ω, Two-Channels Driven Best Option for Dolby Atmos Surround Soundīest Overall AV Receiver 1.A Perfect Receiver for Wireless Surround Speakers.And to complete your speaker setup, see our article on the Best Home Theater Systems. You won't find any surround sound processors or preamps here – just full, integrated AV receivers. When making this list, we chose to only include receivers that have the ability to power speakers. The market is a crowded one, so we’ve picked out some of the best AV receivers for this year for you to choose from - whatever your budget, or room size. It’s because a good quarterback makes the team better - and a good receiver will bring the best out of your home theater speakers. It’s not just because it tells everything where to go, routing signals to different speakers and screens. An audio-video (AV) receiver is the quarterback of your home theater.