What type of receiver should i get for a good surround sound system?

Pioneer in my opinion gives the best Sound quality, second to that would be a Denon system

For the love of God steer clear of BOSE and Fluance. The latter are not much better than white van speakers, the former are the most over-priced over-rated speakers on the market. BOSE = Buy Other Sound Equipment. Better Sound Through Marketing. No highs? No lows? Must be BOSE. Onkyo make excellent receivers. So do Pioneer and Denon and Marantz and Yahama. Anything from these guys will be good, go with your budget and yes Amazon is a great place to look for pricing and check their marketplace sellers too as good vendors like Vanns, Crutchfield, JR, OneCall, etc., sell through them also. For speakers if you can move to individual bookshelf speakers you'll really elevate your system. Polk's TSi series aren't going to win any "high quality top of the line" awards but they are great value for money. I hooked my father's system up and we went with an Onkyo TX-SR609, TSi 300's for fronts, TSi 100's for rears and the larger of the two TSi centre channels for the centre with 2 Lava 10" subs, sounds very nice for the money spent. For full disclosure I don't work for any speaker or receiver manufacturer. I have Panasonic plasma, Paradigm speakers, Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver. Goldring turntable, Pioneer Elite SACD/DVD-A playback, PS3, Parasound phono preamp and a mixture of Monoprice, Ixos and Ultralink interconnects. Seriously, avoid BOSE and Fluance like the flu vaccine.

Before we get into that, I have to say that your speaker choices are really, really BAD. Bose is pure crap; They spend most of their money on marketing, not design or manufacture. Fluance is barely better than the white van speakers used in those scams. Junk. -Fluance has been around for a few years and show up on various HT forums from time to time as "the next giant killer", usually by folks that are uprgading their HTIB. They are entry level speakers, nothing special and very generic designs. They are a "price point" online only seller. Like anything else, you generally get what you pay for.- Then, speakers made by companies that make a full range of electronics tend to not be very good. Specialist companies, such as Infinity, Polk, JBL, and Energy, to name but four, are better than anything you could get for similar money from Onkyo, or Sony, etc. Yeah, cheap all-in-one HT systems are total crap. And, to add insult, they tend to have proprietary connections, so that you cannot reuse the speakers (Not that you'd want to!) when the central unit dies. Now, back to proper receivers. The good news is that solid basic units can be had for as little as $200. And, a good set of 5.1 speakers can be had for $250 and up. In receivers, companies I'd recommend would include Pioneer, Harman Kardon, Yamaha, and Denon. Each has a range of models from the basic up to the near sublime, where you can pay a grand. We have two Pioneers, and one Yamaha, as well as a total of 21 Infinity speakers, across four systems. All sound great. All have great connectivity. None cost an arm and a leg. A couple of places to do your looking would be Amaz*n.com and Newegg. Both offer shipping, often free, and both have a range of very good deals. I have bought audio gear from both, and I would recommend both. Right now, on Newegg, you can score a 5.1 Polk speaker set, the 6750, for $200 inc shipping. The list price is $600, so that's a great deal.

Yamaha RX-V465BL 525 Watt 5-Channel Home Theater Receiver Source(s): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001S2RD9U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=yhs001-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001S2RD9U