Ah I see,
In your case the The SR7006 is being used as a pre-pro with the amplification coming from the Thule so no other receiver upgrade is needed as the SR7006 is already a good sounding receiver as far as receivers go especially for movie content. I have the AV7005 and chose it for sound quality. Sounds like you first want a new center channel for movies and that is fine. First things first. :W
For music especially with those amazing Ardents coming I would look to add later an external dac and pre-amp with HT bypass or dac/pre amp into the mix . This gets you off the receiver's built in dac and provides the best path for your HTPC source for music only. The idea is all music is routed through a quality stand alone dac. The pre-amp with HT bypass allows you to pass 7.1 content for movies straight through the pre-amp from Blue ray, etc to the Receiver then to the Thule as if you didn't have a pre-amp connected.
When high quality music payback is on the menu, your taking the receiver (week link) out of the signal path by going HTPC - DAC - Pre-amp - to 2.1 channels of your Thule. It is a big step up using my NAD M51 DAC compared to the AV7005 to do D/A conversion and no receiver can touch it. You can get a pre-amp that has base management like my Xsp-1 or put something else in line like your destroyer for base management. Switching just gets harder if you add the destroyer in.
I am using a notebook to dac right now for a music source but will be adding an HTPC next and will just use USB for music to M51 and HDMI to AV7005 for movie content, switching is easy and no D/A conversion from the HTPC, more than one way to skin a cat but this works well. When your Ardents are done you can borrow or get a loaner quality stand alone dac to see the difference before you spend more. Amplification is last on the list I would think. I'm not going to comment on the tube thing as for me this is moving backwards in sound quality.
In your case the The SR7006 is being used as a pre-pro with the amplification coming from the Thule so no other receiver upgrade is needed as the SR7006 is already a good sounding receiver as far as receivers go especially for movie content. I have the AV7005 and chose it for sound quality. Sounds like you first want a new center channel for movies and that is fine. First things first. :W
For music especially with those amazing Ardents coming I would look to add later an external dac and pre-amp with HT bypass or dac/pre amp into the mix . This gets you off the receiver's built in dac and provides the best path for your HTPC source for music only. The idea is all music is routed through a quality stand alone dac. The pre-amp with HT bypass allows you to pass 7.1 content for movies straight through the pre-amp from Blue ray, etc to the Receiver then to the Thule as if you didn't have a pre-amp connected.
When high quality music payback is on the menu, your taking the receiver (week link) out of the signal path by going HTPC - DAC - Pre-amp - to 2.1 channels of your Thule. It is a big step up using my NAD M51 DAC compared to the AV7005 to do D/A conversion and no receiver can touch it. You can get a pre-amp that has base management like my Xsp-1 or put something else in line like your destroyer for base management. Switching just gets harder if you add the destroyer in.
I am using a notebook to dac right now for a music source but will be adding an HTPC next and will just use USB for music to M51 and HDMI to AV7005 for movie content, switching is easy and no D/A conversion from the HTPC, more than one way to skin a cat but this works well. When your Ardents are done you can borrow or get a loaner quality stand alone dac to see the difference before you spend more. Amplification is last on the list I would think. I'm not going to comment on the tube thing as for me this is moving backwards in sound quality.
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