<font color='#000000'>I agree and disagree with everybody above. How’s that for a definitive answer? I’ve had a fair amount of experience over the years (personal, not professional) with sound systems and have seen a lot of things change that I thought would never change, and have seen high end audio gear get obsoleted that I didn’t think would ever get obsoleted, only improved. Before buying my current receiver, I gave real serious thought to separates again as I was disappointed in the sound quality of my old multi-channel receiver. I looked at pre-amps costing much more than what I eventually paid for my receiver, and I simply couldn’t justify it. There wasn’t a single one out there that could even come close to giving the same features that most higher quality receivers have. And then, even after convincing myself that I didn’t need all the missing features anyway, I come to find out that the models that I was considering all had reliability problems. Go figure. So this is what I did. I waited until Yamaha announced that they were going to discontinue the RXV3300 and dropped the price by hundreds of dollars. It then became a no-brainer. Even if I didn’t like the performance of the amp section once I heard it in my own listening environment, I still had the pre-amp that I could use, with all it’s features, for far less than the cost of a separate. I think most serious listeners would agree that the sound of this receiver is quite respectable and wouldn’t need any further tweaking. For me personally, after listening for decades (please don’t ask how old I am) to separates only “stereo” systems, I missed the dynamic range and other associated characteristics of large power supply amps. So off to eBay I went and picked up 3 Yamaha M-85 (260 wpc true twin monoblock) power amps to go along with the M-60 that I already had. Now I have a system that I would put up against systems that cost MUCH more. The sound quality is amazing because I basically have a total of 4 “stereo” systems tied together to work as one. So to answer your question, does today’s receiver by itself sound as good in stereo mode as yesterday’s power separates? No, definitely not. I don’t think you’ll find hardly anybody that will argue that point. But right behind that you’ll hear something to the effect that the sound is still quite good however. But, the potential is there to completely crush yesterday’s audiophile grade stereo system at a fraction of the cost if you assimilate old stereo technology with today’s multi-channel technology. I’ve had my current configuration up and running for a couple of weeks now, and I’m still shaking my head daily in disbelief at how good it sounds. Like my girlfriend said, “I’ve never heard anything like it, ever.” By the way, there’s no way I’m going back to conventional stereo now, 8 channel stereo and NEO 6 are much too addictive and sound sooooo much better than conventional stereo.</font>