Paul,
Besides the 8500, my other consideration is the Monolith HTP1. Seems the most budget friendly 16ch Dirac processor, and the stellar measurements on ASR is very compelling.
Downside is the warranty risk, have to ship back to States… Firmware and functionality wise it also seems very stable. I haven’t actually looked in detail, but you don’t hear the rants and struggles that one notices about some of the other processors including RMC 1 and JBLs.
For me, I guess I’m being silly but I like the simplicity and neatness of running the surround and atmos channels off the internal amps…saves a lot of interconnects.
There are probably only a handful of scenes in a handful of movies that would ever stress an AVR driving 8ch surround and atmos in a typical setup. Something like a 1% scenario?
But I’m sure spl aside, sound quality does improve with external amps. Even at lower nominal volumes.
Cheers!