A lot of this depends on how big your room is. I've got 603S2 fronts, 602S2 rears, LRC6S2 centre and an ASW675 sub and they all like to be played loud.... I think there may be more subtle speakers out there if you like to listen quietly or have a small room. 600's like to shout! If you have a smaller room you'll be too reliant on the compression modes in your AVR300 and / or the DVD player. I only just upgraded from a Yamaha RX-V1400 to an AVR300 and I like the way the Arcam sounds in direct mode..... I have a Denon 3910 and listen to a lot of DVD-A and SACD... a really open sound. But I don't care too much on the AVR300 soundstage when using the internal digital conversion. It's too muddled. Why the speaker delays still affect the output when stereo PCM is selected is beyond me??? It sounds awfull, and is something Yahama got right. Personally I the think the Yamaha did a better job of Cinema and PCM.... oh no! I hear you all say... but the Yamaha was not as good in direct mode.. Also, I think the Yamaha had much more punch and you should have seen the cones move! The Arcam can't quite do that in the same way. Where are those real watts? Perhaps this is all hype. As for speakers, I was hoping the AVR300 would be a good upgrade path to better speakers, like the B&W 700 series or perhaps jmlab's 918's or Audiovectors M3I sigs... but I may have to re-think this and go for some serious amplification.... perhaps Classe, Parasoud, or McIntosh. The Arcam is a fine receiver but's it's too expensive when you line it up against the competition. I also think their software is very poor. Why should people be concerned with software upgrades? Arcam should sell a product that works... not one that needs constant maintenance because their software 'gods' can't be assed it right. I'm not surprised there are so many posts of 700/1000 problems.... I think there's a quality issue here that Arcam should take a serious look at.
I think I've said enough..... but truthfully, 600's do work well with the AVR300 if you have the space and tolerant neighbours / wife.
Was that a quick reply????