[gorge]

Its still great with music and internet radio works really well too! I have one loan whilst my 500 is being repaired but I am almost certain to keep it now

[MadSquirrel]

Bit late joining this thread, but thought I'd add my £0.02 worth.

I have an AVR360, which I bought last summer to replace my AVR250 which got stolen during a burglary. Superb receiver, possibly slightly better than the 250 in 2-channel mode, however there's a couple of features the 250 had (and presumably the AVR300 and 350 models) which are missing from the AVR360 (and AVR400):

1. On the 250, you could set a surround mode for each input format on any given input and the unit would remember the last-used mode for the format as well as the input; eg on the DVD input you could set stereo for PCM and PLIIx for AC3 2ch, with MCH inputs automatically switching to the appropriate mode. The upshot being that if you stuck a CD (or MP3 disc) into the DVD player the receiver would turn off all the surround modes automatically, but revert back to PLIIx when you inserted a DVD-Video disc with a non-multichannel (AC3 encoded) soundtrack.

2. The 250 had a very useful DSP mode called "Music" which, when enabled on a 2ch input, would derive a centre channel at -3dB and extract ambiance to the 4 rear channels, whilst passing the L-R channels through unaltered. This was very subtle yet very effective. I guess the thinking is that because the 380 has PLIIx Music and DTS Neo::6 Music modes that it wasn't needed, however both the PLIIx and Neo modes mess around with the L-R channels and don't sound anywhere near as good as Arcam's custom mode on the old receivers.

Is there any chance of getting either (or both) of the above features reinstated via a firmware update?