I have a 2805, which has slightly less power than a 3805, paired with klipsch rf-7 fronts & rf-5 rears, which are not difficult speakers to drive. Currently have a rotel 1080 200x2 channel amp, rotel rcd 1072 cd player & rotel rc-1070 stereo preamp, as well as a Cary Audio Cinema 6 pre & Cary Cinema 5 amp (5x200). My cd/dvd is a denon 2910. The 2805 never had a problem driving my speakers, but I knew the speakers were capable of so much more. If you are going to get an amp, go multichannel unless you only listen to music in strictly 2 channel & your happy with the 3805 performance for movies. With the denon I always listen to music in the 5 channel stereo mode or on pure direct with my speakers connected as A&B. The more power I feed to all the speakers, the better the system sounds for music, including at lower volumes. the rotel is a nice amp, and have tried using the rotel for the fronts & the 2805 for the rears, but it doesn't remotely compare to the cary amp driving all channels. With the cary (or the rotel only driving the fronts with rears off, to a lesser extent) the soundstage is broader, more enveloping, more detailed, and the clarity improves or the clarity at least is more noticeable. Add the Cary preprocessor and it's another level entirely, vocals significantly improve, distinction between low/mid/highs is more pronounced, the bass is exceptional, and the soundstage is immense. Denon makes a great product, and offers alot of bang for the buck. However, moving to a better processor & a multichannel amp, even just for music listening purposes, is well worth the additional investment. I have tried the above listed components in virtually even possible configuration, and the last choice I would make is buying a 2 or 3 channel amp and having any of the speakers driven by the receiver. One caveat, my rears are fairly large floorstanding speakers, at least in comparison to many "surround" speakers, so what suits my system may be somewhat overkill in a system with smaller surrounds. In that case I would recommend a large 2 or 3 channel amp and smaller amp for the surrounds. It's not that the Denon cannot power your surrounds, it's just that the more quality power a speaker has, the better it is going to sound. One of the best systems I heard recently was a set of bookshelf speakers powered by a 200 watt amp, and if I had not heard it I would not have believed it, as I would have told you it was ridiculous overkill. it was not, and now thinking about doing the same for my office system.