I haven't made what I was thinking very clear have I?
I was thinking that assuming the Arcam's power-amps and the Rotel are gain matched, then the Rotel, whether it's lower or higher quality, could be driven by the AVR350's preamp outputs thus allowing a full 7 channels and bi-amping or 5 channel bi-amping by the amp, plus using a Rotel to tri-amp the bass only driver of the 99.36s.
As the bass driver operates at a considerably lower tune than the top mid-bass driver, I was assuming that it would be the more power hungry of the drivers, thus I couldn't see much point in only supplying it 50w when the other drivers would be getting 100w+ each from the Arcam.
On reflection, the Rotel could be used to power the tweeters alone leaving the Arcam to deal with the heavier requirements of the bass driver, but I was also assuming that the Arcam's amps would be better quality and you always want the best quality amps, regardless of power, attached to the tweeter and/or mid driver.
There was a lot of assumptions in there and it ignores any number of other factors like amplifier output impedances affecting damping factors, current supply abilities to deal with low impedances, etc, etc.
My personal experience was that a 100w Rotel had provided noticably superior quality at all volumes than a 100w receiver, although that it in turn is found wanting by a stand alone stereo poweramp in both quality and quantity, inspite of all being rated as
similar power on paper.
Next time, I'll think quietly!
Russell