i don't think i am, i was given both the receivers and used the kenwood for a very long time for a stereo setup and was quite happy with the sound, one day i wanted to mess with the marantz and came to the conclusion it sounded much better, it may be the EQ thing your talking about or whatever, the marantz has all kinds of digital processing stuff in it, the kenwood is totally analog. the only way to see if it was the amplifiers themselves would be a double blind test with the direct button enabled on the marantz (bypasses all the processing). either way i really don't care why the marantz sounds better, im just glad it does.