which Brand of Reciever produces the Best Audio?

You will get better responses if you include a list of your equipment and a budget.Be aware,what someone else says is "best",might not work for you at all.

If you are accustomed to vintage, buy a reciever to do the HT and surround, and a 2 channel preamp with Home Theater bypass, and a seperate front channel amp. Best of both worlds. Denon and Onkyo are great for HT, if you want hi-end stereo sound you are not going to get there with any reciever, even an Arcam or NAD (I have had lots of problems with NAD's, but they sound good)

If your #1 concern is sound quality, I would recommend sticking to a good pre/pro (the older and quite inexpensive Krell HTS sounds awesome) and a good 5 channel amp. It will probably end up costing you close to the same as a new receiver, but sound quality will be superior. You will probably give up some of the lossless decoding capabilities (quite a few BluRay players can do that for you though), and very likely HDMI switching (connect video directly to Plasma with audio going through coaxial and/or 5.1 analog input for lossless decoding in the BluRay player).

Arcam does make some very good sounding receivers and the Sunfires sound decent but can deliver lots of power and will drive almost anything.

Outside of running a high quality HT pre into your flavor of amplifiers, what you're asking for in a receiver to run modern HT simply doesn't exist.

IMO, not all "digital" is cold and lifeless when implemented correctly. Since the linear solid state receivers you've mentioned above are not to your liking you might be limiting yourself. Keep in mind that most HT source components and their media is in the digital domain.

I find modern 7.1 HT is simply too much fun. If you have a large display the improvement over 5.1 in the L,C,R, dialogue placement alone is worth living with these current digital shortcomings. In time we may see a larger selection of hardware to fill differing tastes. I always suggest biasing the budget towards a higher quality display and speakers that won't need upgrading later and going thrifty on a receiver that may get a huge transformation next season.

Classe', Meridian, Anthem, and Arcam, are offering higher quality 7.1 systems and I believe McIntosh is developing a substantial system with very detailed room equalization. I have no idea if any of these systems will fill your requirement for "something warm". If and when you find it, I hope you let us know where you landed.