Treated myself to a new AV Amp

[DubFan]

I have the same Pioneer you used to have. Bought it new about 10 years ago, never had a problem with it. I currently run it with a set of Yamaha speakers, 4 satellite speakers, a centre and an active sub. It's a really good set up, but I hardly get to run it these days with having kids.
I'm not bothered about video switching because I'd rather just run cables direct to the TV, keeps the signal purer and means I don't need the AV amp on to watch TV.
Mind you, my TV actually has reasonable speakers, but so many of the current crop of LED and LCD TVs have such tiny speakers that you need an amp and speakers just to watch normal TV programmes.

[Ant1981]

With the HDMI switching, would you have to have the amp on all the time to watch your HDMI source? Or can you just route only the audio to the amp for when you want to have the surround on?

[Shady Pioneer]

The amp will allow audio only to come through without the TV being on.

I use my Apple TV for music from my phone and don't always require the TV to be on for this.

[DubFan]

The amp will allow audio only to come through without the TV being on.

I think he means the other way round.
IE: watching an HDMI source on the TV without having the amp on.
I think most amps will need to be on to pass an HDMI signal from say BlueRay to the TV.

As for AppleTV and music, I have my AppleTv connected directly to my amp on an Optical cable, so I don't need the TV on to listen to music.

Direct connection of HDMI, audio or analogue video signals will always be better quality than putting the signal through an amp or switch box.