I had an old Yamaha Pro-Logic receiver, bought in 1996, and then recently got a Yamaha RX-V750. I compared it to the equivalent Denon (2105), and liked the sound of the Yamaha a bit more. Yamaha's are supposedly a little brighter, while Denon's supposedly ahve a warmer mid-range. It may be because I am loosing some high-freq. response in my ears, but the Yamaha just sounded more dynamic to me.
I think it sounds decent enough for 2-ch. music, which I usually listen to in the "pure-direct" mode, with all of the processing turned off, tone-controls bypassed, display off, etc. I also like the fact that I can power-down some unused capabilities, such as Zone 2.
That said, I still think that the old 2-ch. integrated amp I bought in 1977 (a 60 Wpc Kenwood) sounded better (for 2-ch. music). It was built like a tank, had a jewel-like machined volume knob with little splines machined into it, and a mirror backing plate, and had no series blocking capacitors in the signal path. It's frequency response was therefore rated from DC to 100KHz., with 0.02% THD. It also had totally separate power supplies for each channel. Unfortunately, I sold it at a garage sale, like an idiot.
Speaking of Kenwood, I notice they're not listed as one of the choices. My impression is that kenwood's current line seems to offer a lot of specs for the money, at least on paper, but that makes me think there must be some form of catch, in terms of sound quality. If they sounded like my old amp, I'd be impressed, but there's probably little resemblance.
