$ 1,000 A/V receiever recomendations...

Just add a seperate amp? Well I guess that is what I have been trying to say. And why on earth would you want to put a Yamaha in the chain? Look, I am just trying to save the guy some money in the long run. Most people end up going through several upgrades during their trials at HT. Sure know I did. Now if someone is looking to just have a nice little HT setup, then sure, go ahead. Run on down to Circuit City and get yourself a nice little Yamaha or HK (spit) or whatever brand name receiver you want. But if you want a true brute of a system. And at a reasonable cost, then buy used and do yourself a favour. Go seperates! I don't care what kind of DSP modes (?) any receiver has. Why would you want some jazzed up DSP modes anyways? You only want, DTS, DD, and stereo.

A little side note for the uninformed. Although Yamaha produces their own processing chips, they have been doing such, for far longer than anyone else on this planet. They have the experience and that goes a long, long way.

This is old hat for yamaha.

I wouldn't consider myself uninformed. More like experienced and educated in this area. If the Yamaha chip was any good. Don't you think everyone would use theirs?

I've been there, done that.
Used to have a receiver, some Marantz unit, then later upgraded to the now-discontinued Sony TAE9000ESD(pre/pro), which was not far short of some of the higher end pre/pros costing 5x.

I moved out of that giant-killer Sony unit to the Yamaha, and can safely say that the Yamaha better the older Sony in every area- bar none. Details, transparency, soundstage, sound & image panning cross screen, front to back, what I would call cinematic scope, is just done so much better. Plus the dirt-cheap Yamaha comes powered(!)

The only separate pre/pro that I would consider an upgrade from there would be one of the Meridians (8x $$$$).

Even using the Yamaha in stereo mode, I find its transparency amazingly good. Used in hi-res digital playback(DVDA & SACD), I don't find myself lacking in dynamics, soundstaging or blackness of background.