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

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.