Your speakers and room have more impact on sound. The avr helps but your speakers will always determine what you can do.
Yamaha is a more dynamic avr so it’ll help add some excitement to you elac. Which are overall a neutral to darker sound.
I do agree to some extent that denon/marantz users are missing out. One thing denon does well is it uses every speaker better in a surround setup. For example Yamaha is more center channel driven. Center is almost always the loudest and other channels you almost have to really listen for if they are active. Until they are obviously called upon for a big action scene. Denon or marantz every channel is more active enveloping you in a different way. Onkyo and pioneer are a little over the top and over active. This is with all speakers level matched, they still do things different. Knowing all this I tune in different ways per each avr brand. Then check with rew.
So what are denons? They are considered to be neutral, and marantz more of a warmish in nature.
I agree room and speakers have some impact on the sound, but in my case, it's the same room, same speaker, same cables except avr.
The moment I switched my Denon to the Yamaha, I noticed an improvement of sound, the yamaha definately sounded better in lower volumes, and more balanced, that too uncalibrated.
After calibration ofcourse it made the sound even better, so in total I would say it was 5x improvement over the Denon.
It made even my crappy subwoofer sing. Now I wasn't hearing just the boomy bass but also, well tuned subwoofer which put out some sweet low end bass notes as per the music that was being played.
But then again the Denon is X2300W which is one model lower to X36000H and that too 4 year old, but I'm still doubting whether X3600H would've sound any different than X2300W, since both are Denons and this a denon which is just 1 model above it.
I saw a post on facebook where the guy just recently bought the Denon X3700H and wanted an amp that could drive his moniter audio silver 300 better than X3700H, it's quite suprising that X3700H being a 2020 can't drive the MAs.
What I've noticed looking at the various post all over the internet is that, for Denon to sound good for music is that, an external amp is crucial part, without which they fail to sound good.
I've also heard the Denon + Taga harmony towers in the retail stores, they were too harsh and lacked the quality.
Same story with my Denon X2300W, elacs were too harsh and unrefined with Denon. This guy in the store was playing a concert DvD encoded in DTS hd format.
Switching to yamaha made a big diference in sound. I can actually hear some mid bass kickin out of the Elac speakers but wirh more accuracy.
Nothing on Denon worked for me, flat being the brightest, reference again being bright and thin, L/R bypass again being dull but did improve the bass but wasn't anywhere as good as yamaha's natural or flat setting.
Switching off audyssey made my speaker sound like an AM radio.
So, alltogether Denon isn't good for people who are a critical listener for music. Therefore I suggested OP to choose Yamaha over Denon.
But the OP feels more comfortable picking the Onkyo, well even the Onkyo will sound punchier than most Denon in the same price range. I have been hearing about it a lot. Onkyo is more punchier than Denon.
So, what in the hell does Denon do then besides sounding crap?
Even my 12 year old Sony htib sounded better than Denon X2300W.
Most pribably the Sony htib playes louder was because of the 3ohm setup making it easier for the slim reciever to sound louder and punchier.
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