Wow. This is turning out to be a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be....
Have not done any a/b, or long-term comparisons, myself. The last two refresh cycles I did included all A/V gear (TV, source, receiver and speakers). I know that my current Denon/Axiom/Pio 141/Oppo combo looks and sounds a lot better than the integrated Yamaha sound bar that proceeded it. By a lot. And that sound bar was a big upgrade over my old Yamaha receiver and Bose satellites. By a lot. The only constant has been the room. So, am 100% positive that I have upgraded how things look and sound for the same 12x17x8 room.
One thing I'm pretty sure of: I do hear an audible difference before/after the application of Audyssey MultiEQ setup on the Denon 3808. For me, in my room, multi-channel sound sounds different (to my ears better) in more listening locations after I run the setup.
So my current thinking, for what it's worth, is that for a given receiver it is certainly possible to make it sound better or worse in a given room through some form of equalization (software, physical treatments, whatever).
It is sounding to me, therefore, that the real debate here is not whether or not one receiver actually sounds better than another, but rather whether one receiver can *tuned* to sound better than another in a given room. That, I would think, has to be a function of a receiver's feature set, and gives us some parameters for differentiation.
Or maybe I'm being delusional. Fun to think about though. Will give it some more thought over popcorn and beer tonight....
Glenn
