With my AVR-3700, the amps are not actually turned off but only their inputs are disconnected. It's too bad that this AVR is not more energy efficient.
Thanks for pointing that out. I don't follow that specific topic closely but I would assume how your Denon behaves is the same for all Denons with this feature.
If they were to instead design a " full/maximum energy efficiency " version as you quite reasonably suggested there would be a problem in that if a consumer later decided to switch the amp section
back on there would need to be a 4 to 5 second muted delay, "warm up", before the sound successfully emerged [just like all of us are used to when we power up an AVR] and some consumers would be thrown by that ~5 second delay and assume something was "wrong", hence run to call their dealer/CSR.