I have a Sony STR-DN1050 on the family room system – near the Kitchen, a Denon AVRS-900W in the games room, and an older Denon AVR-1612 in the basement. IMHO good sound, after a decent choice of Receiver, is about Speakers. Selection of the latter and their setup is far more critical than the former.
I think the Sony STR-DN1050 is fabulous (Audioholics agreed as it was designated the best receiver in it's class when reviewed and recommended it in the yearly AV Guide. At the time I was going to spend in the neighborhood of $2K on a Marantz, as I had a fabulous one decades ago=> when I stumbled into the Sony STR-DN 1040 – which I tried for almost a month and returned, only because I wanted a few extra features in the 1050.
I remember someone (Gene?) stated you couldn’t get anything better at twice the price. Your 1060 is a slight tweak on this design (typical of OEMs who change things every year for mostly marketing purposes – although Sony lost me when they dropped the AM radio band. A Receiver needs to Receive Radio signals (if not it’s just an integrated amplifier / processor) and I typically listen to a local AM Sports Radio Station when making dinner).
Denon’s approach to set-up and control is more traditional, as Sony made their remote super simple (great for my wife I thought, but she just tolerates my choice of hobby and doesn’t embrace it much). I grabbed the Denon AVRS-900W to upgrade an older, still 100% functional Sony Receiver as it lacked HDMI capability; and in particular the HD Sound capability DTS HD Master, and its Dolby equivalent for BluRay Concert Disks. (I’m not into immersive sound.) It has all kinds of bells and whistles –like internet radio- which I haven’t had time to tinker with. (But I’m not expecting much quality so it’s more a curiosity on making it work.)
The Denon AVR-1612 in the basement is on an Economy System (I bought it used off Craigslist) I put together just for grins to see what I could do on the cheap. I tried it connected to the other two systems speakers, and it sounded great although it doesn’t have all the features the other two receivers have.
I dismissed Onkyo in all my purchases as they had serious problems with their HDMI boards failing (and I think they were losing so much market share they tried to prop it up by extending their warranty in some countries). Pioneer used to be another great brand, but it was recently bough out by Onkyo so I didn’t want to go there either.
As you will see elsewhere, a lot of OEMs are trying to out do each other on features to distinguish their brand at a certain price point. To do this they typically cheap out on the power electronics (amplifier section, main power transformer, etc.) which is first noticed by how light they get each model year. For reference my Denon AVRS-900W is less than 22 pounds and my decades old Marantz 2325 weighed in at about 50 pounds – and that was for only two channels at 125 watts RMS (both channels driven into 8 Ω/ohms, 20 Hz – 20 kHz with 0.1 % T.H.D.) => not the 7 channels (or more) most receivers push these days. I rarely can find anyone listing power output in RMS, with all channels driven into 8 Ω/ohms, 20 Hz – 20 kHz which I still consider the true way to define power output. It puts every OEM on a level playing field.
My bottom line is there are many acceptable mainstream brands including Marantz and it’s Denon brother (same OEM – with many shared designs and components), Sony, and probably Pioneer /Onkyo (brothers too). And I haven’t even mentioned many others as it’s a crowded marketplace. Some like me tend to stay with basically what’s worked for us in the past, but that shouldn’t limit what you look at as you may miss a new Gem out there.
If you are unsatisfied with your present system, the members here can help you get the most out of it, and maybe a tweak here or there may improve the sound enough to satisfy you; and who knows, maybe even impress you again.
