Hey Carl... er Tom,
I decided to go to a local Magnolia to listen to an amp to see if I could hear the difference between a reciever and an amp. Well, I got a guy that is admittedly a bit of a shmuck. I didn't want to deal with him, but he was the only one that came over to talk to me. Anyway, I told him what I was looking to do, and he took me in to compare a B&K 125W x 2 amp to the Denon 3806 I think.
We listen to some rock, (Green Day and Fleetwood Mac), first with the B&K. The first problem is that I noticed that the sound was set up for 5.1. So I told him to turn off all but the front speakers so that I could hear JUST the B&K. Well, then I've got no vocals, because they had been coming out of the center channel. So he says, let's try with different speakers. I don't remember what we were listening to first, but now we were listening to some Def Tech towers. Again, no vocals. So I just tell the moron to turn the center back on. Lo and behold, vocals. So anyway, I listen for a bit to the B&K. It sounds good, but not any better than my Yamaha sounds.
So now we switch to the 3806, and the music sounds MUCH better. There was a ton of midbass that had been missing when we were listening to the B&K amp. The salesman even agreed with me that the Denon sounded better. So needless to say, I am more confused than ever. After I left, it hit me that maybe the Denon had some settings on that accentuated the midbass, where the B&K didn't. But I have to say, I was extremely shocked that the amp sounded worse to me.
I had planned on perhaps buying the Emotiva LPA-1 before the free shipping promotion ends this week. But now, I think I may hold off on that. Any ideas on what might have happened?