AV receiver forums

I'm looking for a high quality home audio solution with advanced wireless capabilities. While Pioneer, Denon, Sony,... are already offering Airplay and Bluetooth enabled receivers (such as the Sony STR-DN1030), I feel the concept is lacking, and mostly not futureproof.

First of all, I'm not quite sure Bluetooth A2DP and Airplay will be around for that much longer. Airplay is closed and proprietary, and therefor subject to the whims of the company who developed it. While I love Bluetooth for its use of open profiles, such as A2DP, AVRCP, etc., it's fairly limited in terms of bandwidth and range. New protocols are being developed as we speak, and I need to know that whatever the new standard is going to be, my receiver will be compatible with it.

In addition to wireless streaming capabilities, I'm also looking for something that's highly controllable through open protocols. The open protocols are very important to me, because I don't want to be limited to a certain type of remote control, or the official iOS/Android/whatever remote control app the company supplies. Much like you can with Bluetooth, app developers need to be able to easily include this standardized (!) functionality in all different kinds of applications, on different platforms.

To ensure future hardware compatibility, a USB port could be included to which new hardware can be connected. For example, in 2014, the new WiFi standard 802.11ad will reach the market. To keep my system up to date, I would just need to plug in a 802.11ad usb wifi dongle, and install a firmware update.



I know all this seems like a lot to ask for, but truth is, a computer (or even a cheap $25 Raspberry Pi) can easily do all this. If a new Wifi streaming protocol is released next year, a Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, Android, ... based system will very likely support this. The only problem is, I don't believe it's possible to properly wire an amplifier to that kind of setup. After all, I'd need the computer to control the volume and power state of the amp, and as far as I know that's currently not possible?


What I would really want, is something similar to conventional receivers, but with the original proprietary firmware replaced with a configurable, Linux based operating system , with conventional connectivity options such as USB port(s). However, I don't believe this exists, and I doubt it will in the foreseeable future.


To be honest, I just have no idea where I could find something that suits my needs. I'm really new to all this AV/Receiver stuff and I actually don't really know what it is I need, so I was hoping anyone here could give me a lead on a solution that could fulfill my needs.


Thank you for your time, and my apologies for the long and probably confusing post. It took me 2 hours to just write this stuff down.